One Shot at Victory
by LadyCordeliaStuart
Summary: I love every Tribute I've ever received. I want them all to win, and here's my way of letting them. Enjoy one-shot AUs for every single tribute that has ever appeared in my SYOTs. 115 and counting...
1. Chapter 1

**Know what I hate? Killing Tributes. Unfortunately, I've had to do so 115 times. I decided to go ahead and give them all a moment to shine. Here are AU one-shots for every Tribute that has ever been in one of my SYOTs. I'll be doing it in the order in which they died. Enjoy!**


	2. Miller Thresher

**Miller, unsurprisingly, was the first to die in his Games. It was also the first SYOT I wrote, so he gets the first shot. The only way he ever could have won was by weaponizing his fatness. Everyone was starving, but he took the longest. I'm sure no one is sad this isn't what happened.**

* * *

Miller Thresher

I knew this wouldn't be any trouble. My plate rose up and I saw nothing but flat gray rock in every direction. When the gong sounded, I ran toward the Cornucopia and grabbed the first thing I laid eyes on: a fat loaf of bread. The Careers were all around me, but they were all targeting someone else, which was just the way I wanted it. I hustled out of there and ran for the hills.

The Gamemakers didn't reckon with someone as crafty as me. I saw a shallow hole and hid in there while everyone else fought. There was just enough slope in the ground to hide the Cornucopia from sight. I crouched down and waited for the other losers to die. While they were fighting like idiots, _I_ was finding shelter and planning real strategies.

 _How can they do this? It's unbearable._ It had been eight days. My bread was long gone. Other than that, there just wasn't any food. I was wasting away. It was barbaric. It was _inhuman._ When I got back, I was going to have a word with the Gamemakers. I crawled around searching for a single crumb. I tried to eat a rock, but it just broke my teeth. Another cannon went off, and the Anthem started playing. _I won?_ Finally! I pumped my fist in the air and waited to be adored. It was just like I always knew. Money, fame, babes, adoration... they were all mine. But first, there would be food.


	3. Daniel Mondins

Daniel Mondins POV

There wasn't any mercy anymore. There was no joy, no love, no remorse, no pain. There was only rage.

 _I ran toward Sarla and watched the knife hone in on her. I was a step away when it cut into her. She fell without a sound._ _When I reached her, the life was gone from her. I held her for an instant and felt everything drain away._

 _I threw myself at Venus and hit her as she drew back another knife. She landed on her back and I dug my hands into her throat. Her coughs and struggles ended in a crunch and a final gurgle. Her allies, who had seen the whole thing, didn't even react. They took one look and turned away._

It was the same after that. Every time I saw another Tribute I saw someone living when Sarla wasn't. I chased them down and crushed the life out of four of them. The Careers took out another six before they turned on each other. I took care of the survivor. They boy from One was too battered to fight back.

Every time I killed one I relived Sarla's death. It was like lancing a boil and feeling the poison seep away. I hoped I'd find peace eventually, but there was always more pain. Maybe when they were all gone I could rest. The pain would settle inside somewhere and I could go on.

I saw the last girl hiding in a tree far above me. A twig cracked and I peered upward. The girl covered her mouth and scooted as far up the tree as she could go. She screamed and begged for mercy as I followed her up. The branches grew thin and there was nowhere for her to go. She held out her hands and backed out over open air.

She seemed to blur, and Sarla took her place. I saw my sister, pleading uselessly as death approached. I knew whatever Career would have been in my place wouldn't have hesitated. At last I understood how they felt. They resented the very idea of life where so many had already died. I took Sarla's last killer by the throat and bent her until she broke. I dropped her body and listened to it crash through the branches.

Sarla was gone. I was the only one alive. I would have given anything to be dead instead of her.

* * *

 **If Daniel and Sarla were the last two he'd kill himself. That passion meant this was the only way. Also, the last girl Daniel killed was Heidi.**


	4. Thompson Kiersten

This wasn't what they told us it would be. When the gong sounded, all of the Careers exploded off their platforms and got to work. I'd been looking forward to it all my life, and I couldn't believe it was finally here. I ran for the weapons.

Venus got there ahead of me. She picked up a knife and threw it at the brother from Five. It thought it would kill him right away, but something awful happened. It sliced through his neck and blood shot into the water. He bent over and pressed at his neck, and he started making terrible noises. Even over the chaos of the Bloodbath I could hear his choking gurgles. His little sister clung to him and tried to drag him away. He waved her off and shoved her back. Another knife thudded into his head and he fell into the water. I saw Venus smiling as the little girl fell into the water after him and started crawling away. Venus took out another knife, then sneered and turned toward a bigger target.

 _They didn't tell us it would be like this._ In training, we fought holograms. A hologram just dissolved when you killed it, and another one took its place. It didn't scream or beg for mercy. It didn't bleed like the blood that stained the water red around me. I felt my face drain of blood and my nose start to run as I looked at the carnage. All but one of us were going to end up like the boy in the water, or the girl on the end of Royal's sword. I realized someone was shouting at me.

"Thompson! What are you doing? Get to work!" Valencia was saying. She threw a sword at me, but I let it fall into the water. I looked at Venus, who was aiming a knife at another fleeing Tribute. As soon as she saw me, she'd know what I was. I ran before I gave her the chance.

I fled through the trees, checking over my shoulder for the hunters that would come after me. I was crying like the coward I was, and I'd never imagined anyone could be so scared. I didn't want the honor or the victory anymore. The Games were nothing but blood and pain and fear. Even winning wouldn't stop the fear.

I was alone that first night. I'd run away from the pack, and I knew I was alone even back home. I was a coward- the worst thing anyone in Two could be. I was the worst of the worst. I shivered and shifted on the hard ground during the cold night.

 _Why did they do this to us?_ Our own parents and everyone we knew told us to come here. Did they not know how awful it was? They couldn't know. No one would make a child go through this much fear. Or maybe it was just me. Maybe all the others enjoyed it and there was something wrong with me. I wished I'd found out before it was too late.

They only told us one thing about the Games: killing. Everything else they left out. They didn't tell about how the skin would peel off my feet and they'd turn to mush. They didn't tell about my clothes sticking to me like damp rags. They didn't tell about eating leaves and twigs and grubs I found squirming in a rotten log. Most of all, they didn't tell about the fear.

Every day I ran. I knew the others were hunting for me. Day after day, cannons went off and I wondered what killed someone. Was it Venus and the others? Some awful muttation? Just starvation or exhaustion? Mine would come evetually. Soon I lost count.

I ran again when the fire started. It must have been the Gamemakers. No one else could make such a wet Arena catch fire. There was nowhere to go. They tell you to get underneath the smoke, but there was nothing there but water. I ducked under until my lungs couldn't take it, then broke the surface and filled them with scorching air. They were trying to drive us together. Either the fire would kill me or the others would.

Some screamed, a harsh and ragged noise. She must have been running, since the noise moved like a wailing siren. It got louder, and then it was like it burned out. It faded away like a dying wind, and another cannon went off. Soot and tears streaked my face as I submerged again.

Far away, I heard a sound. When I next came up for air, I realized it was the Anthem. The smoke was already clearing, like some giant vaccuum sucked it away. The girl I'd heard must have been the last one. Somehow, I was the Victor. So why was I still scared?


	5. Alayza Mont

The Games suck. I almost died in the Bloodbath. Venus' knife tore out a chunk of my scalp and I knew I looked ridiculous. I _did_ manage to take out that ridiculous poser from Two, though. I had a backpack full of loot and and Arena to conquer.

I quickly found out that to survive in the Arena, I had to adapt. Which was stupid, and I hated it. Things never went my way. I tried to use my fishing line and the first fish I caught snapped it. I swore up a storm and almost threw the rest of the line into the water. I clenched my fists, forced a breath, and sat down. With gritted teeth and curled fingers, I tied some line to a stick and tossed it in the water. It sat there for an eternity.

"Stupid fish! Why don't you bite?" I yelled. I could see them through the water. They were sitting on their little nests raising their stupid baby fish. I yanked the line in past them all and the hook caught in one of their bellies. It started to flop and swim in circles.

"Suck it, fish!" I said triumphantly. I hauled in the fish and jammed a stick through it sideways. I raised it up over my head and watched it finish flopping and lie still. Fine. If they want me to make the Arena work, I can do that.

Getting water was also a pain. I got a bottle in my pack but the idiots in the Capitol didn't think about how gross the water was. Of course I had to drink it, but before long it felt like more was coming out than going in. There wasn't even anywhere to go. I only hoped it didn't leak back into the part of the water I drank from.

I got by a few days without running into anyone else. I knew I could kill just about any of them if I tried, but why bother? I heard a girl screaming and knew the Careers were about to get another one. I huddled down in the roots of my tree to watch the action.

The girl came into view, running and looking over her shoulder. It was the book girl, I thought the one from Six. She was making good time, too. She might have been able to outrun them. I could have waved her over and she might have been able to get into my hideout without them seeing her. Or... I could adapt.

I felt around in the mud underneath me. I picked an egg-sized rock out and hefted it. It hit the girl right in the leg and she fell forward. She got back up and tried to run, but they were already on top of her. The One boy took her out with a single stab.

 _What a loser. Couldn't even stay hidden,_ I thought. The Career bozos would take care of themselves. I didn't have to worry about the rest of them. I was stronger than most of them and smarter than all of them.

As it turned out, my last enemy was the shrimp girl. Her brother died days back, and I was amazed she'd made it so far. It was easy to hold her under the water until she stopped moving. Normally I didn't kill people, even if they deserved it. But this was the Games, and I had to adapt. I had to admit, she made some pretty funny noises.

Then it was just me. You don't have to be the biggest, or even the strongest. As I proved, you only have to be the best.

* * *

 **Well that got dark right in the home stretch.**


	6. Caldwell Brax

Caldwell Brax

The Arena grew quieter ever day. Except for the blasting cannons, there was almost no noise. It was better that way.

After the first day, I settled into a new routine. Every day, as soon as I got up, I filtered some water through my sand filter. It was still murky, but I hadn't gotten sick yet. After that I searched for cattails and water lilies. I ate my breakfast, and then I counted who was left. There were only four of us now: me, Venus, Spencer, and Royal. After that I washed my clothes. I hated mud on my skin. I also hated damp clothing, so I usually sat in my underwear until they were dry. Suddenly, there was more noise.

"Attention, Tributes. There will be a feast at the Cornucopia in thirty minutes. We highly encourage everyone to attend," a voice said. I didn't want to move. I liked my nest and my routine. But the announcer said to go. I was supposed to obey the Capitol. I got up to go. While I was still on the way, a cannon boomed.

The announcer lied. There wasn't a feast at the Capitol at all. There was a table set with some flimsy plates, a pitcher of liquid, a bowl of noodles, and some sort of pie. Spencer was lying on the ground halfway to the table. Venus and Royal were wrestling near him. Royal was bleeding from his chest, but he didn't seem to be hurt. He was trying to pin Venus' arm.

Even though it wasn't a feast, there was still food, and I was hungry. I snatched the pie off the table and turned to go. Another cannon interrupted me. I turned back and saw Royal climbing off Venus. He was holding his stomach in one had and his sword in the other. He started coming right at me.

I dropped the pie and ran. Royal started to run after me at a horribly fast pace. I felt his eyes on me and knew I had to get away. I reached the water and it pulled at my legs, slowing me down and bringing me closer to Royal. Royal half-fell into the water after me and grabbed the back of my shirt. I cried out and tried to pull away from him. He raised his sword and I batted his arm aside. I was surprised when my defense actually worked and his arm fell away. He fell forward against me and we both toppled down into the water. I landed on my behind and my head was barely above the water. Royal landed facedown and only emerged from the water after a stream of bubbles came up. He was moving slowly, like a zombie. I pushed him off and scrambled backwards. He pushed himself up on his sword and lurched toward me. Instead of attacking, he fell into the water again. The hand holding my shirt relaxed and he weakly struggled in the water.

I heard his cannon minutes later. I was still wading through the water, trying to get away before he got back up. I wondered what killed him- was it Venus, or did he drown? It was all the same. It was over. I could go home, and everything would be normal again.

* * *

 **I'm seeing a pattern here with Venus. If she's not the last one, she's in the top three.**


	7. Apollo Wilson

I didn't know what happened to the Shogo I'd seen in the Capitol. I only ever saw him with his little boy. He was always happy and he seemed like the most devoted father in the world. What was his boy seeing now? A man spattered in blood from himself and who knows how many other people, missing three fingers and one ear. Shogo could barely stand upright and he left a trail of blood as he shambled toward me like a zombie. His cheek was slashed open, revealing bloody teeth and a stream of foamy spit down his jaw. His eyes were like a zombie's, too. They weren't angry or even hungry. They were just focused on me.

The other cannons had sounded in the morning. It was just me and Jay against whoever was left. I found out that was Shogo when he jumped out of the bushes and stuck his sword through Jay while he bent over the river to get water. I ran toward him to help, but when I heard the cannon and saw Shogo's face, I ran the other way.

 _You can't run,_ I thought. It was more that I knew it was what Pepper would have said if she'd been with me. This Games had a time limit. I could run away from that Shogo easily, but come nightfall, the odds were fifty-fifty. The last thing I wanted to do was face that thing behind me, but there was no way out.

I turned around and faced Shogo. He was slow, but he'd gotten closer to me as I thought. He was between me and Jay's spear, so all I had was myself. His breath whistled and the foam on his lips flecked with every exhalation as he advanced. I waited until he stumbled and his sword arm dipped, and then I charged him. I wanted to get inside his swing, where I could fight back and hopefully overwhelm him with sheer strength.

I slammed into him with all my force, but he didn't go down. I couldn't believe it when he just leaned into me and I bounced off. I was a heavy, powerful guy, and he couldn't have had a pint of blood in him. What was keeping him up? I punched him against his ragged cheek. The tear widened and blood and spit covered my hand. He backed up and drew back his arm to stab me. I grabbed it and it felt as fragile as glass. I smashed it over my knee and it snapped as easily at it seemed to when I practiced. Shogo grunted and tried to shove me back and grab it with his other hand. I picked it up first and waved it at him.

"What about your son?" I asked him. That put life into him. His eyes burned and he growled like a dog as he leapt at me. It was too quick for me to think, but I knew what I was doing when I pointed the sword at him. I pushed it through him as he charged and blood covered the parts of him that weren't already soaked. I pulled it out and stepped back in horror. Shogo, who was leaned against me, slid to the ground. I moaned when he started to crawl. His crooked, mangled arm and his mutilated fingers slid across the ground as he pulled himself to me. I begged him to die as I stabbed him again. He twisted an arm behind him and clawed at the sword. I sobbed as I yanked it away from him.

 _Please, no more,_ I pleaded. I raised the sword and cut off his head. Only then did he finally stop moving, and I shied away from the head for fear it would try to bite me.

None of that mattered while I was lying in bed. I only cared about one thing. I heard her outside the room, pleading with the nurses and trying to squish past them into the door. Meanwhile I was pleading with the nurses and trying to get out of bed. When I couldn't take it any longer, I waited until they were gone and snuck out. I felt off-balance and I had to lug some machine plugged into my arm along with me, but I reached the door. As soon as my hand turned the knob I heard Pepper getting up. I opened it, and there she was. Her hair was wild and her eyes were bloodshot. She looked back at me, and neither of us could speak for a heartbeat. Then she crunched in on herself and cried like I'd never seen her cry. Of course I hugged her, and she pressed into me and clenched my shirt in her fingers.

"It's okay. I'm back," I said. I didn't know Pepper could cry so hard.

"Don't leave me," she finally whispered.

"I won't ever," I promised. "You can show me everything. We have all the time in the world."

* * *

 **No lying here: Apollo's is longer because I really liked him. Also, the battle with Shogo was necessarily drawn-out and I still had to show him reuniting with Pepper. Anyone reading can draw their own conclusions, but my take is that these are all canon separate universes, like the DC Multiverse. So for me, there is definitely a world where Pepper and Apollo found their happy ending.  
**


	8. Bree Maeberry

Bree Maeberry

I shivered and tried to hold back the tears as the sun faded behind the leaves above me. I was huddled in the mud between the roots of one of the trees, waiting for what was coming. Even the Careers weren't as terrible as the things the Capitol had unleashed. We must not have been killing fast enough for them. They sent something into the Arena with us. They sent monsters for us.

None of us knew what it was when we first heard the noises. I was there when they first came. I heard a soft trilling, like something cute and furry. Another girl must have thought so too, since I heard her talking to them. I heard her call out to them and hid among the roots. She didn't talk to them long. The noises got louder and then she was screaming. She didn't scream long either.

It all changed after that. I heard six cannons that day. After another two days, all that was left was the Careers and two other Tributes. I wasn't close by, but I heard the last battle between the monsters and the Careers. It went on all night. The cannons came one at a time, separated by hours and preceded by horrible screaming. When the Anthem finally played, I saw all their pictures in the sky.

I didn't dare move. I sat crouched in the mud, pushing myself deeper until only my eyes were above the surface. My clothes were green with mildew as they stuck to my skin. My skin turned black in the wetness and started to peel off like flaky slime. I had nothing to eat and only stagnant water to drink. My stomach constantly cramped and I sat in my own runny filth. Whenever I heard the monsters calling, I pressed myself against the roots and froze.

I hardly noticed the smell anymore. It was hard to dinstinguish between mud, rot, and waste. When I heard the noises again, I tried to wrap my hands around the root next to me. As my skin slid against the wood, my flesh broke like tender meat and fell into the mud next to me with a wet plop, leaving me with nothing but remnants on bare bone. I heard something fall into the water, and then splashing. Two voices, one male and one female, began calling to each other and urging each other on faster. But they weren't fast enough. They started screaming in fear as the monsters got closer, and I heard the exact moment that terror turned to pain. One voice stopped, and then the other. There were two cannons, and I had won.

The trilling stopped as soon as the cannons sounded. I heard the humming of a hovercraft's rotors and pulled myself forward, leaving my hole for the first time in days. My legs were numb and paralyzed. I fell facedown in the mud and pulled myself farther with hooked fingers sliding through the wetness. I turned my face up and saw the hovercraft over me. I wondered if he could even see me- every bit of me was as brown as the mud around me. He must have seen the light reflect off my eyes, since he set down next to me. As I watched him sink lower in the sky, I felt my tears carving through the mud on my face, letting my skin show through.

* * *

 **And here's what would have happened if the mutts had actually worked as intended. I didn't mean for it to get so icky, but I started describing trench foot and it took off from there. I was quickly inspired by the scene in Apocalypse Now where the hero rises from the mud. That was just a cool scene.**


	9. Harvey Willis

Harvey Willis

The Capitol played right into my hands. That crocodile animal ate the Careers one by one, leaving the Arena ripe for the picking. It ate some of the rest of us along the way, like the pair from Eleven, and none of the rest of us wanted to kill anyone. I didn't _want_ to, either, but I had to stay alive.

It was always true, but it was more apparent this time that all the killing was done by the Gamemakers. Those of us that weren't eaten by animals were killed by the Arena. On two occasions I passed by Tributes nearly dead from dehydration and dysentery. I had the same symptoms, but I'd managed to stay healthier by drinking water constantly in an attempt to put it in faster than it came out. It was shaping up to be one of the longer Games, since we wer fading away, not flaring out. Whoever won- me, of course- was going to be the most endurant.

Sometimes it was a little funny. If the other Tributes weren't so stupid, they could give me a run for my money. To stay away from the crocodile, you just had to stay in the trees unless you were getting water. Food wasn't worth risking your life over. I stopped feeling hungry after the first three days. I didn't even have to use my snares. The other Tributes were snaring themselves.

When another cannon went off, I was only one Tribute away from victory. I decided to take matters into my own hands and go hunting. I was careful, though. I still stayed in the trees, safely away from the crocodile. I had a feeling whoever was left might wander toward the Cornucopia. There might still be something useful there, and at least there was dry land.

If whoever was left was coming, I reached the Cornucopia first. I waited inside and planned what I could do when he or she got there. I might not have time to rig up a trap. I knew I could win a fight, but that might be ugly. If we tumbled into the water, the crocodile might interrupt and snatch my victory away from me.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw my opponent. It was just the preppy boy from Three. I never would have thought he'd last this long. There were no weapons in the Cornucopia, so we'd have to fight barehanded. The easiest way to win would be to drown him, but that turned even my stomach. It seemed so depraved to hold a boy under the water until he stopped moving. If I got nervous for a minute, he might turn the tables on me.

I scanned the Cornucopia in case I missed any weapons, but all I saw was the dirt under my feet. That might be all I needed, though. Stuck among the dirt and mud were rocks, one of which was the size of a hammer head. I picked it up as the boy got closer to the point where he'd see me.

I wound up and threw the rock at the boy. What with the element of surprise, he didn't even see it coming. It hit him right in the head and he fell facedown into the water. Watching him die was easier than holding him there. He was such a stupid boy. He drowned in two feet of water.


	10. Royal Spinel

Royal Spinel

Valencia thought she had me wrapped around her little finger. For a while she was sort of right. I didn't consider her a threat, so I humored her in some small ways as we went through the Arena. I could have killed her whenever I wanted, but I didn't have to. I didn't have to until she tried to cut my throat in the middle of the night. Then I did what I could have done all along. She had a nice pair, but not nice enough to die for.

Something changed after I killed Valencia. As I saw her bleeding out silently, I realized I needed to get my butt in gear. I'd been lagging behind and not doing much ever since the Bloodbath. I'd been happy to make time with Valencia and let the weaker ones die out. There wouldn't always be weaker ones. And when it was just the Careers left, I'd have been the weakest Career. Not anymore.

Valencia had had a good idea. She just couldn't pull it off. I finished what she started and killed Thompson right there. I would have killed Venus, but honestly, I was scared of her. Instead I took a bunch of supplies, threw a bunch into the muck, and took off.

I got lucky with Venus. I saw her face in the sky a few days later. She must have gotten attacked by that gigantic crocodile monster I saw once when I was far up in a tree. He probably wasn't around anymore either. She'd already taken out Peppermint and Apollo for me, so the toughest opponent I had left was Dane. He wasn't as tough as I thought.

It took a long time to find all the others. I had to look through muddy holes and climb through more branches than I ever thought possible. After a while, I found it was easier just to stay on the ground and throw spears. I was no tree climber.

Jean gave me some trouble before he died. I was lucky Valencia's sponsors had already sent an obscene amout of money. Azure used it to send me medicine that kept me from getting some horrible infection from the filthy Arena. I was better in no time, and I was back to killing Tributes.

The last one I found was Astra, the girl from Six. I knew it wouldn't be hard, but it was even easier than I thought. She didn't run when I found her. She was slogging through the mud with her legs dragging behind her when I saw her. She saw me coming, but not before I smelled her. She smelled like she was already dead. I thought she must have an infected wound, but it was her feet. They looked like pale sponges. They stuck out of her shredded shoes and I could see the missing toes and peeling skin. She couldn't even stand, let along fight. It was easy for me to win once I got my head in the game.


	11. Valencia Widad

Valencia Widad

People used to look down on women who used their charms to get what they wanted. Now we had more of an economic view on the matter. It was simple supply and demand. No one was getting lied to or cheated in my relationships. I knew I was only with Royal because he was strong. He knew he was only with me because I was pretty. We both benefited. That's just capitalism at work.

It wasn't like I had any other chance in the Arena. Not against Thompson and Royal and Venus. Not even against most of the others. I was a pretty dresses and shiny rocks sort of girl, not a fighting and planning kind of girl. I was made for luxury. I just wasn't made for the Games.

I wasn't entirely just a pretty face, either. It was me who saw that Venus was the one to beat. I was the one that convinced Thompson and Royal to take her out. I was also the one that hid behind the Cornucopia while they fought. It wouldn't have helped anyone for me to fight. I would have gotten in the way. What a pity. Thompson died during the fight, but so did Venus. It was all the better for me and Royal. One less ally for him to have to kill.

Royal and I knew our duties. Royal watched for attackers and got rid of the competition. I was more of a homemaker. I did the cooking and I kept the camp clean. I kept Royal warm at night and told him how strong he was. Sometimes I kept watch at night while he slept. He knew he could trust me, because he knew I couldn't live without him.

Every day Royal went out to hunt. I sat in the camp and ate bonbons while I waited for the cannons. I spent a lot of time doing laundry, since Royal was always muddy. I wasn't made for chores, but a lady had to make do. I did like washing his shirt, because that meant he had to be shirtless. It wasn't all an act when it came to him. If I'd been living the life I should have been living- as a rich socialite in One- I'd even have hired him. I'd have paid him for what I currently did free out of necessity.

The cannons rolled on. One day, I heard Royal setting off the twentieth cannon. There were only four of us left. He came home from hunting and I served him some of the soup I'd heated up. While he bent over it, I clobbered him with a mace. I wasn't strong enough to kill him, but it sure as heck knocked him out. I finished the job at my leisure. He never had time to look at me with betrayal. It would have been more romantic to use a knife, but it might have been messy. It might not have worked at all. Royal was strong and his reflexes were good.

Royal thought he didn't have to worry about me. He thought I'd wait until we were the final two, and surely he planned to kill me when we reached that point. I had other plans. I didn't have to wait for him to kill every Tribute. The last two weren't a worry for me. I didn't need to go out and hunt them. I didn't need to do anything at all. I had a Cornucopia full of food and supplies. I had sponsors ready to send me any bauble or treat I asked for. They knew I'd pay them back when the time came. Supply and demand. The other two had mud and starvation and crocodiles to deal with. I sat in the camp and ate bonbons while I waited for the cannons.


	12. Dane Verity

Dane Verity

First I lost my arm. Peppermint stabbed me with a rock and tore a ragged gash in it. The wound turned red and started to swell. When it started to get tender and I noticed I was thirstier than usual, I knew what I had to do. I'd heard stories of people who stepped on nails and ended up dying with rigid muscles and locked jaws. There was no medicine in the Arena, so I took the only other option. I tightened the tourniquet until my arm turned red and waited until it darkened to black. It fell off like ash on a burning stick as I was wading through the mud.

Next I lost Celestial. I found her on the third day in the Arena. We knew we didn't have much time, so we sped things up. I'd never met anyone so perfect. It broke my heart that we were in the Games and it could never last, but it almost made it worthwhile to get reaped just so I could be with her. She had this crazy idea about training the weird muskrat things that were in the Arena with us. It was funny how much they loved her. She had them eating out of her hands. They got jealous of me and hissed when they couldn't get close to her because I was in the way.

Even she couldn't love the crocodile monster. It burst from the water like a firework and we ran opposite directions. I saw her climbing a tree as I ran with the monster hot on my trail. By the time I shook it off, I had no idea where she was. There were three cannons that day, and each one froze my blood. I counted the seconds as the sky grew darker that night. I dreaded the silence as I waited for the Anthem. She was the first face, whether or not she was the first cannon. After that, there was nothing left to lose.

I only fought one Tribute in all my time in the Arena. It was the boy from Six. He tried to steal some water I'd just purified. He must have been dehydrated and probably desperate, since he hardly fought back when I chased after him. I only meant to get him to let go when I grabbed him around the neck from behind. I didn't think about how long it took to choke someone. But I couldn't say it was an accident. You don't choke someone unless you're willing to kill them.

The last person left in the Arena with me was Ever Fellows. She seemed pretty capable in the training room. I wasn't looking to chase after her. I was busy just trying to stay alive. I had it better than a lot of Tributes. I knew how to fish, and I never went hungry. Mostly I caught bland-tasting mudfish, but it kept me alive. Ever didn't come from Four. It must have been harder for her. Eight wasn't a rich District, either. They couldn't afford to send her food. Four weeks into the Games, I heard her cannon.

I shouldn't have been so mournful about Celestial. We'd only known each other a week. That wasn't enough time to really love someone. But I still found myself wishing she'd won. She was such a lovely girl, and I felt like she deserved it more. She'd have won by a brilliant use of something the Gamemakers designed to make trouble for us. I just won by eating fish and staying alive.


	13. Spencer Wire

Spencer Wire

I used to look so handsome in the Capitol. After the Arena got through with me, I was a drab, muddy mess. My hair was plastered down to my head in horrible sticky clumps and every inch of me was covered in glop.

Of course, I was in no position to worry about my appearance. I was hungry as a bear and starting to get close to panic. It had already been a week. If I didn't find something to eat soon, I'd be

too weak to try. It would be over if that happened.

My mouth actually watered when I saw the frog. It was disgusting, but I wanted to cram it in my mouth and taste the sweet blood as its bone crunched in my teeth. I bellyflopped onto the log it was sitting on. I was trying to catch it, but instead I smashed it flat against the wood. It was twitching and twisted and sticky with blood. I ate it raw and licked the blood from my fingers.

After that, I got a little more fancy. I started roasting the frogs over a fire. I loved to watch the fat dripping off their legs as they dangled. They were crunchy and rich and buttery and delicious. They filled me up and gave me new life. If I got out of the Arena, I was going to make it up to the glorious creatures. I'd buy a million flies and let them loose in any swamps I could find.

Water was still a problem. I chugged it left and right to put it in faster than it came out. I seemed to be keeping up, but it wasn't pretty. I finally solved the problem by mugging a little girl for her water filter. I tried not to think about what I did to Sarla. It would have happened eventually anyway. That didn't stop the guilt, and I knew I deserved to feel it.

Exsequia said the feast was optional, but I wasn't sure I trusted her. It wasn't very nice of her to call me to a feast when the only other two Tributes left were Thompson and Venus. I got there first and stuffed a bottle of pure, clean water into my shirt. I grabbed a bowl of cherries and hid under the checkered tablecloth.

It sounded like Venus was the next to arrive. I didn't hear the heavy footsteps of a male or Thompson's near-endless chatter or whistling. It was horribly suspenseful sitting inches away from a killing machine. Venus' shapely legs were so close I could smell them. I was terrified she'd hear me if I moved, but just as terrified that she'd brush against me if I didn't.

Thompson saved me. Venus' legs moved and I heard her pushing her chair back. I took a chance and peeked under a sliver of tablecloth to see what was happening. Thompson was better than I thought. He was wearing a vest and a gladiator helmet, and he held one arm across his throat. There was nothing for Venus to hit. She threw a knife at his arm and he ignored it as he came at her.

The only way for me to win was to fight dirty. One of Venus' feet stomped down right by the table I was hiding under. I shot out my hand and yanked her leg. She fell back and slid down the table. Thompson seized his chance like I hoped he would and stabbed her before she hit the ground. I rolled over and darted out the other side of the table just as he stabbed his sword right where I'd been sitting.

I jumped up and pushed the table over onto him. I threw the tablecloth over him and kicked his head with all my might. I kicked it again and tangled the cloth around it as he tried to get it off. While he was still blinded, I grabbed one of Venus' knives. I stuck it down through the cloth into his head. I felt it penetrate the skull and my hands slid down it at the resistance, slashing them both. Thompson went limp and lay with the sheet over him like a shroud.

I was going home. I would have fame and riches and everything I wanted. Weirdly enough, what I really wanted was to eat some frogs.


	14. Aspen Matthews

Aspen Matthews

The Arena wasn't so bad. I didn't mind being covered in mud all the time. It was kind of funnier. It would have been even funnier if I could have hidden under the water and burst up at Valerie dramatically, but that probably would have given her a heart attack. It still would have been funny.

"Hey. Hey. Hey Valerie," I started. She was getting all gloomy again. She was taking it all harder than I was. I thought it was hilarious the first time I pooped like a fire hose. She thought it was "unhealthy" and "dangerous" and "probably dysentery". It was up to me to lighten the mood. Neither of us would get out of here if I didn't.

"I hesitate to ask. What is it?" Valerie asked.

"Want to hear a joke about the Arena?" I asked. Valerie looked up at the sky and pretended she wasn't starting to smile.

"Never mind. It's... all wet," I said, lowering my voice with each word so the punchline was a whisper.

"You're something else," Valerie said, shaking her head.

"I got a million of them," I said.

"Pretty sure I've heard at least a thousand," Valerie said.

"Hey, cheer up. We only have one more to outlast," I said.

"Two more people, really," Valerie said darkly.

"They'll probably let us both out. I'm too funny and you're too beautiful," I said.

"One of those is true," Valerie said wickedly. I was starting to rub off on her.

Another cannon sounded. The Arena felt suddenly empty. The air went cold.

"That's everyone," Valerie said. "What are we going to do?"

I was in too deep to give up. "There's only one solution," I said ominously. "A rap battle."

"How about a singing contest?" Valerie said.

"Slam poetry," I said.

"Rock skipping," Valerie said.

"Flip a coin?" I said. We bent to find a rock, even though we probably couldn't go through with it. I didn't know what was going to happen.

The water roiled. A mud-covered monster burst dramatically from beneath the surface. _Someone stole my prank,_ I thought indignantly. But there was no one else left in the Arena, or so I thought. There _was_ someone left: a very large, very toothy crocodile. It snatched Valerie by her middle and took her under the water before either of us made a peep. The only sound I heard was the cannon. That wasn't funny.


	15. Valerie Fallow

Valerie Fallow

The bow I rigged together out of a stick and a vine wasn't good for much. I wasn't a good shot and the bow wasn't powerful enough to penetrate much more than a leaf. I had more luck with the arrows I sharpened out of some sticks. I couldn't shoot them, but I could still stab things with them. I didn't need much power to skewer the wiggly wet mudskippers that slogged around at the edge of the water. They tasted muddy and wet, even when Aspen and I roasted them over a fire, but they weren't awful.

I was hunting when I heard the fight. I ran back as fast as I could, and whoever was thre heard me splashing. I got to Aspen and saw Harvey running off, leaving a trail of blood. Aspen wasn't unharmed either. He had a big cut all down his side, and I could only imagine how quickly it would get infected around here. My first aid training was about to get the ultimate test.

I washed and bandaged the wound as best I could with our purified water and some gauze from our supplies. It didn't look like it would kill Aspen on its own-it wasn't much more than a superficial cut. It was what would come next that would do the real damage, and my skills and supplies probably wouldn't be enough.

Aspen didn't let the cut get him down. He kept joking and clowning around like nothing had happened. It was harder for him to move, and then the area grew stiff. I started doing more of the hunting and water gathering and told him to stay still so he wouldn't reopen the wound. Then it turned red and puffy. He kept itching at it and smearing blood across himself. I would wash him and he'd joke that I just wanted to get his clothes off.

After a week, it didn't look good. The skin on his side was white until it got to the cut. Then it was red and translucent. I could see the pus under the skin and drained it daily. Instead of scarring over like I'd hoped, the flesh grew weak and moist. I could tell it hurt Aspen terribly, even though he kept smiling. Ominous red lines inched up his side like death's fingers. I knew what happened when those lines went too far, but there was nothing I could do. All I had to work with were bandages, water, and any plants I could find in the Arena. I should have tried to cauterize the wound, but I'd been afraid I'd do it wrong and hurt him more. It was too advanced now.

He grew delirious. It was sickening to see him muttering and pulling at his bandages. Blood, mud and pus were smeared all across him, and as soon as I cleaned him off, he smeared it back on. It was only luck that he whispered instead of screaming. Sometimes he chuckled, like he'd made some joke I couldn't hear. We were huddled in a nest of roots under one of the trees, where no one could see us. But no one had to see Aspen for him to die.

I'd lost count of the cannons a few days back. Every minute was spent trying to get Aspen to drink and trying desperately to think of anything else I could do. He was burning with fever and he glistened with sweat his body couldn't afford to lose. I splashed him with cool water and kept draining the pus as fast as it could come back.

Two cannons came, right after each other. Aspen was sleeping, and they didn't wake him up. I could feel the heat radiating off of him in our nest. He reeked of filth and waste, and I worried I wasn't moving him enough to ward off pressure sores. Another cannon rang out. The Anthem blared suddenly in my ears, and I bumped my head on a root when I jumped.

"Presenting the winner of the twenty-fourth Hunger Games!" Polyphemus' voice came. I looked at Aspen and my heart froze. He wasn't burning up any more.


	16. Jean Roberts

Jean Roberts

Cornflower said she'd remember me. I would be her first loss, but it was more than that. I could tell she really meant it. She was probably watching me every minute, just checking to make sure I didn't die the second she got distracted. It was good to know someone cared, but I hoped she didn't have to remember me at all.

Really, I shouldn't have been so worried. I would definitely be remembered after what happened to Hailey. It had been pure reflex, and it would have been self-defense even if I'd meant it. Of course I would snatch up a spear someone threw at me. She was still holding on to the rope she was using to reel it back in, and she fell all the way down. Nobody was going to forget that. I didn't know which hit killed her, but she was twisted and broken when she landed on the last branch. She stuck there for a minute and slid off slowly. She smacked into the mud and it made a wet crater. I turned her over before I left. I didn't want to leave her with her face in the mud.

The next one I killed was Valencia. It wasn't intentional at first either, but it was murder in the end. I came across her while she was alone, probably looking for a place where she and Royal could sneak off. It was dark, so by the time I saw her, we were almost on top of each other. She opened her mouth to scream and I panicked. If she called for the Careers, they'd be on me in minutes. Thompson especially wanted to kill me after what I'd done in training. So I grabbed her around the neck with my arm and squeezed the scream out of her. She was thrashing and clawing, and it was all I could do to hold on. I smacked her head against a tree and she stopped. It hadn't been necessary. She would have passed out eventually. I took it further and killed her. Two more people weren't going to forget me. Valencia's parents would never forget.

There was a pattern in my killings. Each was more premeditated, and I hated myself for it. The next one happened after a swarm of tiny, furry creatures attacked me. As I tossed them away, I saw a girl on a tree branch. More of them were clustered around her, and they came at me whenever she pointed. I kicked off one of the creatures and picked up a rock. I threw it at her head and it knocked her back into the water. She landed face-down in a belly-flop and didn't move. If I'd gone to help her, she would have lived. But I left her. Her friends didn't stop me. It was my choice. I wanted to live, so I murdered her.

Last it was me and Thompson. He was already torn up from the Career breakup, or I never would have had a chance. His hand was red and puffy with infection and he was off-balance from the blood dripping from one ear. I ducked inside his sword strike and shoved him sideways, knocking the weapon from his grip. We grappled briefly in the mud until I seized the back of his head and held it under the shallow water. The worst part wasn't the bubbles. It was when his thrashing switched from furious to panicked. _You're full of shit,_ I said to him so long ago. _I_ was the one who was shit.

Cornflower didn't have to remember me any more. I wished she wouldn't.


	17. Astra Quill

Astra Quill

There was so much water. There wasn't any we could drink without getting sick, but it was everywhere. My skin was pruned all over, and my hair stuck to my back. There was something wrong with my feet. They were always wet, and I was afraid they were starting to dissolve. The skin was pale and baggy, and it slid off like plastic wrap if I brushed against anything. I would take off my shoes and try to dry them out, but even the air was wet. The water tasted nasty, but I had to keep drinking. I drank all the time to make sure it went in faster than it came out.

There was so much mud. It was caked under my nails horribly. I should have been able to ignore it, but it was always there. It started to bug me, and it was almost an obsession. I would scoop out as much as I could, but there would still be bits there. I'd shove my nails underneath each other until it hurt, trying to get rid of that eternal filth. My skin braided into dreadlocks and for the short periods when it was dry, it crunched when I touched it.

Spencer crossed paths with me when I was picking cattails. I saw him coming and tried to leave, but he ran after me. He must have wanted the cattails I'd picked, since I picked all the ones in the patch. He caught up to me and threw me down into the mud. I didn't want to fight at first, but then I realized he didn't either. He was doing it because he needed food to stay alive. I did, too, and if I didn't fight for it now, I'd have to later. I punched and kicked back at him, and when my fingers found a rock in the mud, I smashed it into his head. He stopped moving after that, but his cannon didn't sound. I hit him until I heard it fire. I didn't want him to threaten me again, and I didn't want someone else eating food I needed. I felt like an animal as I ate my raw cattails.

There were a lot of people in the Arena who were stronger than I was. Even though I was willing to fight after Spencer, it didn't do any good if my opponent was stronger. I had to slink through the Arena like a worm, slogging through mud deep enough to hide me and sleeping in tree roots that smeared me with more filth and smelled like wet earth. Before long it felt natural to be mostly underwater. I felt nervous and exposed when I was on dry land or in a tree.

On the eighth day, or maybe the ninth, there was a feast. I didn't go, even though I was starving. I was too afraid of the others, and after the feast, it looked like I was right. Five people died. One of them was Thompson. If he died, I certainly would have. I snuck to the feast area after all the cannons to see if there was any leftover food. All the bodies were still there, which was odd. Then I noticed there were six. One of them, Sarla, was still alive. There was no food, so I left. Her cannon came a few hours later.

The audience likes it when there's a big battle. There wasn't one this year. The last person left with me was Ever. She was stronger than me, so I kept hiding and trying to drink and eat enough to live. Then, as I was devouring another stringy, raw cattail, her cannon went off. Later, when I watched the replay, I saw she died of dysentery. She should have drunk faster.


	18. Sarla Mondins

**I'm not impatiently waiting for forms this time. I just wanted to finally get to the end of the first SYOT. I'm almost there.**

* * *

Sarla Mondins

I'd never been so close to death before. Daniel told me he'd stay with me and keep me safe. I watched him die in the Bloodbath. Daniel was running to me to make sure I was all right, but he never got to me. He was my hero, but he died as easy as a kitten. It changed everything. He was my rock. Nothing was certain without him. My entire world was gone.

Without Daniel, all I could do was hide. I lay down flat and covered myself in mud, lying still for hours on end. The Careers ran by once just feet from my head. They were chasing another girl who had just passed by and who I had been too afraid to speak to. I heard everything as they killed her next to me. It wasn't safe to move, even to cover my ears. The only thing I could do was close my eyes.

There were cannons every day. Sometimes I heard the screams, and sometimes it was just quiet. I suspected many of them were from sickness. Someone sent me a bottle of water purification tablets, and it was probably the only thing keeping me alive. I would wait until the dead of the night and slowly sit up from the mud. My clumpy, stiff hair would brush against the mud as I scooped some water into my bottle and purified it. The water tasted like chemicals and the silt stuck in my teeth. I felt like an animal as I scrabbled for life in the darkness.

I woke up one day to the sound of groaning. My reflexes locked my body still and I carefully opened my eyes a slit over a perion of minutes. I expected to see a boy bleeding out next to me, but he didn't seem hurt at all. He was lying facedown with his nose barely above the mud. I blew some mud out of my own nose, and then I smelled him. I thought the brown sludge around him was just mud, and some of it was, but the rest was something else entirely. I'd never smelled such a rotten, sickly filth as the stench that came off the boy. I couldn't tell which parts came from which end- his mouth was leaking yellow ooze and his pants were a lighter brown than the mud we were covered in.

The trainer in the Capitol had told me about dysentery. He said you could lose all the water you drank in three days, no matter how fast you drank it. He told me how it came out both ends until it burned and you felt empty. The life just ran right out of you.

The boy on his belly next to me was pretty far gone. He barely had the strength to keep his mouth and nose out of the mud. His back arched and his stomach tucked in as he retched, but there was nothing inside him to come out. He whimpered and bent his head lower to slurp the water from the mud.

I thought of the bottle hidden underneath me. The boy was so far gone it probably wouldn't help. If I tried to share it, he might panic and attack me. I couldn't really convince myself that was a valid excuse, though, since he couldn't possibly hurt me. _What would Daniel do?_ Daniel would tell me to leave the boy alone. He was concerned about me, not anyone else. But what about me? What would _I_ do?

It wasn't right to leave the boy. It wasn't safe to help him. It wasn't safe to move and possibly give away my location. I was a rabbit among foxes. Anyone who found me could kill me easily. Even easier than they killed Daniel. Daniel wanted me to live. He loved me so much. If I didn't help the boy, was I worthy of that love?

I hadn't noticed the boy had fallen silent. The next noise I heard was his cannon. I bent my head up and saw him facedown in the mud. I wondered if it was the sickness or if he had drowned. If it was the first, I might have been able to help. If it was the second, I definitely could have saved him. I would never know if I would have.

The last cannon came two days later. I was too afraid to move, so the hovercraft never came for the boy's body. Through the last forty-eight hours, the smell went from sickness to death to rot. I saw his body from the air as they lifted me away. His hair was strewn limply in the water. His skin was white and it was sliding off his skin. Leeches and maggots were teeming all across it. Pale, scummy liquid floated on top of the muddy water. I wished I could go back down there and flip him over so his face was to the sun and not the mud, but I was afraid that if I did, he would grab onto me and beg for the help I didn't give.


	19. Timber Jones

Timber Jones

It wasn't possible that me and Sarla were the last ones left. People our age didn't win the Games. I was trying to stay lighthearted, but it got harder every minute. People like us should be dead by now. It had to be coming for us soon.

"Do you think they'll do something?" Sarla asked, looking out at the Arena. We were both waiting for something to happen. We just didn't know what. The Gamemakers wanted someone to win, and we definitely weren't going to kill each other. We were just two kids.

"Maybe they'll flip a coin," I said. We were so close to going home. I could be home in just a few hours. There would be no more mud and ooze and filth caked onto me. I could see my family again.

"They might just wait until one of us dies, no matter how long it takes," Sarla said. "What's the longest a Games has ever taken?"

"Probably one of the forest years. They're the easiest," I said. I didn't know how long it had taken. I thought I remembered one lasting a month, but I was really young. I might have been remembering wrong.

"Everyone else is dead. There's no one left to kill us," Sarla said. "We're all alone."

The Arena felt empty with only two people in it. It was like we had our own world. It would have been really cool if it wasn't for the Games.

"I'm going to get us some more water," Sarla said. She started to shimmy down the tree, and it shook gently. A branch waved near my face and I backed up.

I looked down at the water and it bubbled. It freaked us out the first few times, but then we figured out it was just sticks and stuff shifting underwater. Sarla reached the bundle of roots at the bottom of the tree and got out our water bottle.

It sounded like someone shot a gun. There was a sound of air spitting from something, then a hiss. Sarla looked up as a gray blur shot out of the water up at her. First it was gray, and then a cloud of red was everywhere. Sarla burst like a balloon and the monster fell back into the water with a huge splash. The surface was choppy and red as I looked for her, but I knew she wasn't there.

The water was still red when the Anthem played. How could they play music when Sarla just got taken? They should be rescuing her. She was going to die.


	20. Ever Fellows

Ever Fellows

There were two ways this could go. There had only ever been two ways. Two possibilities, as different as the two Tributes they led to. One was a trained killer who spent her entire life planning and preparing for this day. She saw everyone else as nothing but targets and had long ago abandoned empathy and fraternity. She lay awake at night looking forward to this day and counting the seconds until it was time. The other was a girl from a land of forests and plants. She spent her days working and her few free moments playing with an old knife in her backyard. She lay awake at night looking forward to this day and wishing she could hold the seconds in place.

Twenty-four Tributes were still on their platforms as a timer counted down one last time. Life and death spread out before us in a golden horn. My eyes went from one platform to another, discarding what I saw until I got to her. Venus wasn't looking back at me. For all she was to me, I was nothing to her. Her finely-tuned mind and eagle-sharp eyes were focused on the band of glittering knives we both needed. With them, we were unstoppable. Without them, we were nothing.

When I took my eyes off Venus, I saw the knives in the center of the circle. A long black band was draped across a table of weapons, part of it dangling in the open air. Six light, balanced knives were tucked into the thick material. My knife at home had never been anything but a toy. It was a lump of metal I threw at a stump because I didn't have any other toys. I never thought I would want a knife so hard or so look forward to the security of knowing I could throw it into another child's head if I wanted. It frightened me how deeply I lusted after half a dozen knives.

There were other things in the Cornucopia as well. There was a spear for the boy from One. A coiled whip for the girl who told the Gamemakers she knew how to use it. Any of those, even the knives, could be my death. It would be suicide not to run in, but the opposite might be suicide as well. If one of us died, the Games would be decided right there. Either of us might die in a second from a perfunctory shot from another Tribute who saw both of us as nothing but targets.

The timer sounded. I would have jumped, but my legs acted before my brain. I ran toward the Cornucopia, and I saw Venus in the corner of my eye. The mud slowed us both, and the water foamed around me as I tore through it. When the mud hardened into dirt under my feet, I leaned forward and focused all my momentum on a path that led me straight into the heart of danger.

I was going too fast to slow down, and I smashed into the table when I reached it. I grabbed the belt even as the pain flashed through my bruised hip. Venus was still a blur in my peripheral vision. I tore out a knife and turned as she reached me. She tried to pull it away from me, and I dropped the knife and yanked the belt with both hands. She stumbled forward a step, and I yanked a knife out of the slackened belt. I was so close I didn't have to throw, and I didn't have to worry about it bouncing off her ribs. I stuck the knife into her heart. I expected her to drop the belt or back away, but she stepped forward to strike back. I pushed the handle of the knife away from me with the flat of my hand, driving it deeper and knocking her backwards enough that she fell. I left the knife still in her and ran off with the other five, checking over my shoulder to confirm what I couldn't believe.

The Games were decided.


	21. Heidi Garrett

Heidi Garrett, D9

There were only five of us left: me, Venus, Celestial, Peppermint, and Ever. Venus was unstoppable, Peppermint was tough as nails, and Ever was the strongest outlier. The only surprises were me and Celestial. Maybe I should have allied with her.

Surviving hadn't been a problem so far. Someone sent me a water purifying straw, and there was plenty of food if you didn't mind raw frog. I hadn't seen the crocodile in a week and the furry mutts had been leaving me alone. I wondered if Celestial liked those guys. She loved animals so much.

I tried to look forward to the future, but I didn't think I saw anything. I couldn't see any future where I would live and Venus or Ever didn't. Nine didn't even have a single Victor. What made me think I could do anything different? My father had been so sure I could do it. He said something to me before I left.

 _"There's my girl who can find a needle in a haystack,"_ he said.

 _"That's easy,"_ I'd said. _"Burn the haystack."_

 _Burn the haystack._ It couldn't work. It was a terrible idea. I couldn't burn an Arena that was half water. But when I looked at the tree towering above me, I saw something that gave me hope. The trees were so densely intertwined they practically merged. If one tree went up in flames, it didn't matter about the water at the bottom. The fire would spread from the top. The trees would be damp, but that was actually a good thing. I'd seen grass fires in the springtime. The wet crops made suffocatingly thick blankets of smoke. That would be my weapon.

I wouldn't have expected to have matches in the pack I grabbed. I didn't, but I had a multitool. Dangling from one side was a strip of flint on a string. I struck it against a metal blade until a spark landed on my tiny pile of tinder I made from a dry leaf. I nurtured the fire and built it up on top of the base of a tree. The wood started to smolder underneath my little fire, and I watched it slowly inch its way up the trunk.

It was hours before the fire really took hold. The thick, damp wood was hard to burn, and dark smoke rose from the spot it started. As the air started to warm, I slid down off the tree and cleared myself a space under another bunch of roots. Smoke went up, so I was going down. If I was successful in killing anyone, it would be Ever. She was the most likely to be up in the trees. She was my biggest threat other than Venus. I just hoped I didn't get Celestial.

When the fire hit the leaves, it took off faster. I heard the crackling as it spread from one tree to another, and the air grew stifling with smoke and heat. I pressed down farther into the mud to avoid the scorching air. More quickly than I'd anticipated, the entire Arena felt like an oven.

The first cannon sound after another half hour. Two more came after that. I hadn't expected that much success, and it scared me a little. I wondered if one had been Celestial and hoped the mutts had been with her.

Another cannnon came a few minutes later. I sat stunned in my hole. I never would have thought it could happen. All four of them, gone just like that. The whole Arena was burned up, and only one little needle was left.


	22. Venus Lorieta

Venus Lorieta, D2

There were twenty-three people to kill. They were gathered in a circle beside me. Some of them I wasn't going to kill just yet. The end goal was to get everyone dead. The people I saved were going to help me get there faster. Only then would I add them to the pile.

The gong sounded, and everyone ran. Some ran toward the Cornucopia, and some ran away. It didn't matter. They were all running to the same place in the end. I ran for my knives. I didn't have to run- no one would have dared touch them. I only ran because I wanted to start the killing faster. When I picked them up, I took first aim at the people running away. It would be easier to kill them now than to catch them later. I heard others screaming as I threw, but the noise didn't come from my targets. I didn't let it take that long. When the smoke cleared and the screaming stopped, there were sixteen people left to kill.

The girl thought she was being quiet. She was as loud the gong that started all of this. She went after Royal first, and I didn't move. I didn't care how the others died as long as they did. I sat up behind her as she finished her task. When his cannon sounded, I added another with a flick of my wrist. There were seven people left to kill.

Thompson asked me once why I volunteered for the Games. I didn't know what words to use to tell him. To me, killing was the most natural thing in the world. Every time I saw someone who was alive, I knew it was my job to make them dead. It seemed to be what I was born for, and it seemed poetically appropriate that someday I would be dead, too. Someday the universe would fade away and we'd all be dead. That seemed like perfection to me.

Even I was surprised at the fire. I thought it was the Gamemakes, but when it died out and Peppermint's face wasn't in the sky that night, I knew it wasn't them. It wasn't Celestial, either, since she _was_ in the sky. It was either Peppermint or Heidi. Peppermint was more dangerous, but Heidi was smarter. It didn't matter. It only meant there were two people left to kill.

I found Heidi gathering water into a bottle. When she saw me, she didn't move. There was nowhere to run. Blood mingled with the water that her bottle floated in when she dropped it. There was one person left to kill.

Peppermint thought she was strong. She fought back when we killed Apollo, and she actually hurt Royal. She thought it would be the same with me. She had some idea it would be like a fairytale where the brave hero fought the black knight. Black is stronger than white. Death lasted a lot longer than life. She found that out.

There was no one left to kill. For the first time since I could remember, I was unfulfilled. My purpose was frustrated, and I dug my fingers into my pants restlessly. I was all alone as I waited for the hovercraft. I wasn't done yet. I wanted more. I wished I could stay in the Arena year after year as they sent more batches of Tributes. I would have stayed there forever, but they wanted me to go. I let them take me, and I didn't give them any trouble. They were going to carry me back to the Capitol. There were a lot of people there.

* * *

 **Venus is different every time I write her. It's hard to write her in any length, since she seems to lack much of an interior life. She's very archetypal.**


	23. Celestial Yeager

Celestial Yeager, D4

I never wanted them to be like this. When I saw animals, I thought I had some friends in the Arena. They were adorable and furry and loveable- not that I wouldn't have loved them anyway if they'd been ugly. Animals were animals and I loved them all. I was afraid they'd be vicious and eat me up, but they turned out to like honey instead. I had some honey, and we were fast friends.

Things didn't go sour until Thompson chased me up a tree and camped out underneath until he could figure out a way to get up. I hid in the upper branches and dodged when he threw his spear, and it looked like I'd be safe. Then someone sent him a tree-climbing kit and he started to scale the trunk. I panicked, and the only thing that came into my head was to go to the mutts. There were two dozen of them sprawled on the branches around me. They didn't look like much, but I thought maybe they'd scare him away or make him lose his balance. I tipped over my honey jar and a stream of the golden goop slowly dribbled down onto Thompson.

What happened next was horrible. The animals poured down on Thompson like a hurricane. They swarmed over him and latched on with their little sharp claws. Thompson screamed and fell backwards off the tree and into the mud. I thought the animals would leave him alone- I _prayed_ they would- but they pressed in even more. Thompson started to make awful, high-pitched noises and blood started to _seep_ out from hundreds of tiny bite marks. They didn't stop when the honey was gone. They only stopped when Thompson was gone.

A thin, pinkish skeleton lay at the bottom of the tree when the animals came back up. They skittered down the branch and gathered around me. I was nearly frozen in fear as they snuggled up to me, chittering and falling over each other. Their muzzles were flecked in blood and they smelled like flesh. They were all over me, just like Thompson. They didn't attack, but they _could have._

They weren't my pets anymore after that. I was the pet. They kept me around because I gave them honey. If the honey was gone, I didn't know what would happen. They might have grown fond of me and just keep me around for old time's sake, or they might get their food one way or another. From then on, I was toeing the line. I'd be a good pet.

It was a horrible idea that came to me as I looked down at Thompson's skeleton. They did that once, and they could do it again. As many times as they wanted to, even. There were five Tributes left. I wouldn't do it to Heidi or Peppermint, but Venus and Royal were fair game.

I didn't end up having to do it to Heidi or Royal. They both died before our paths crossed. When I bumped into Peppermint, we ended up allying instead of killing each other. We both wanted Venus dead before we wanted each other dead. One of us had to die anyway, so we might as well take Venus out first.

It went well at first. Peppermint drew Venus out, and she came at me. As she was about to throw her knife, I held up a hand. She halted, probably out of honest curiosity.

"Wait! Do you like honey?" I asked. As she cocked her head at the bizarreness of it, I threw my honey jar. It spilled all over her when it hit her chest. She wiped at it and wrinkled her nose when it stuck to her fingers. As she looked back up to throw the knife, the animals came at her. Then it went wrong.

When Venus saw the animals, she didn't start throwing. She sensed danger and ran. As she ran, she plowed into Peppermint. They both fell over, and the honey went everywhere. The animals reached them as they disentangled themselves. I was too late to stop them, not that I could have if I'd been quicker. They were like wild dogs. Venus didn't make a sound, but Peppermint made up for it. It was the worst thing I'd ever seen and the worst thing I'd ever heard.

"I'm sorry!" I screamed, hopefully loud enough for her to hear it. "I didn't mean it!"

The cannons sounded together. Venus and Peppermint were all tangled up again. I couldn't tell whose blood was whose and what limb attached to which body. The animals stripped the last of the flesh off and came skittering back to me. They chattered cheerfully and rubbed their bloody faces on my legs.

 _I want to go home,_ I thought as I felt the warm blood. _I want to see otters. Otters don't do this._

* * *

 **I finally got to the end of my first SYOT. If I just do like ten more, I'll be all caught up.**


	24. Ardun Majami

Ardun Majami, D12

I didn't think I'd make it past the Bloodbath. My ally died right in front of me as she tried to get Beth between me and her. Beth came at me after she was done, but it was too late. I was long gone. I'd been running ever since.

During the day, I ran from other Tributes. During the night, I ran from the dogs. I'd seen them once from a perch on the cliffs. They glowed in the dark and they howled like the damned. The only reason they didn't come after me was that they couldn't climb the steep rocks. They took at least one person almost every night. I kept hoping it would be Mist, and on the third night I got lucky. Then I hoped for Beth, and my dream came true after a week.

Luck wouldn't last forever. I had to do the rest myself. All I had to drink was the acrid water that lay stagnant in shallow puddles, and my last food had been a handful of brittle black grass. I needed more than that, or I wouldn't last two more days. I was already getting weak with hunger. My hair was limp and crunchy and my skin was ashy. I picked my way down on the rocks to more solid ground.

The rocks were as barren as the rest of the Arena. More so, maybe. There were gray, jagged rocks and pale dirt. That seemed like everything. Then I saw a skinny, almost black root. I tugged on it and the dirt stirred, sending dust and pebbles rolling down the incline. I kept pulling until the root snapped off in my hand. It was twisted and dry-looking, but I still put it in my mouth. It crunched and fell apart like dust, and it was nearly impossible to swallow. I got it all down after minutes of struggle, but I didn't know if it would even do any good. It might even poison me.

The mutts were my best friends. Every night, they took someone else out of the running. All the people I never could have fought, they fought for me. Torchy, Eltara, Mist, Beth... I would have thought they were targeting the killers if they didn't also kill Nairobi and Jonathan. There was no getting away from them, unless you were hidden in the rocks. I cowered in the crevices drinking puddle water and eating roots.

It seemed utterly bizarre that I could have a chance at winning. There were so many better fighters, better runners, and better hiders. I wasn't the best at anything. I wasn't even memorable at anything. Aside from Jonathan, I was the least memorable Tribute of the Games. The only way I could have won is if everyone, even the mutts, forgot about me, and it seemed like it might be happening.

In the end, it was me and Frankie. I did not hold out any hope. Frankie was almost twice my height, not to mention he was the only one that couldn't crack under the pressure or give in to despair. It was another four days before we saw each other. I saw him first, since I was in the rocks and he was on flat ground. He looked as capable as ever, like the Arena hadn't affected him at all. It was getting dark, or darker, when I saw him. I wondered how he felt safe in the open so near sunset, but he'd lasted this long. He either knew how to avoid the mutts or didn't have to be afraid of them. He hadn't seen me yet, but it wouldn't be long. He was coming right at me. All I could do was cringe back and hope he passed me by.

Frankie was starting to descend the rocks when he tripped. He landed twistedly and even from far away I could see his leg shouldn't be in that position. He got up, but his leg wouldn't hold him. He groped along the rocks and tried to haul himself to a safer place farther down the rocks where the dogs couldn't reach him. He didn't look scared when he heard them howling. He didn't even look scared when they reached him.

* * *

 **Ardun was sent as a Bloodbath and as such was given so little substance this was difficult to write. His form was like three sentences long. But promises are promises. I said EVERYONE got a chapter, and everyone will.**


	25. Dahlia Rowan

Dahlia Rowan, D7

This was _not_ an ideal Arena for someone like me. It was dirty and covered with ash and there was nothing pretty about it. I hadn't had clean water in two and a half weeks, and the only food was the plain bread someone sent me. Ardun must have been even hungrier, since they didn't send him anything.

On the bright side, if anything around here could be bright, there was only one other person left. I thought it was the girl from Six, but I couldn't be bothered to remember her name. She'd be gone soon enough. If we found her, Ardun could take care of her. It was a good idea to keep him around. He pitched our camp and purified our water so I could take care of myself.

Night-time made me nervous. Those awful dogs always kept me up half the night with their racket. Sometimes I saw them glowing in the distance and shivered. Almost every night, they took someone. Hopefully they'd take care of the leftover girl and we wouldn't have to do all that work.

It got cold when the sun went down. Our clothes were thick enough that we wouldn't die, but it wouldn't have killed the Capitol to spring for wool. I huddled underneath the skinny tree that marked our camp and wrapped my arms around my knees.

The dogs started up again. First it was just one howling, and then the others joined in. The sound deepened to more of a bark-like noise, and it moved even quicker. The dogs must have been running. I hoped more noise would follow, and my wish came true. A girl screamed, and her screams got closer and closer together as the dogs got louder. I saw a glow over the horizon, bouncing as the dogs moved. Then the glow circled around one spot. The girl screamed louder for a minute and then not at all.

 _Finally,_ I thought. I'd been sticking it out for eighteen days. I was tired and sore and ready to go home, but I had to wait for everyone else, and they took forever. Now it was finally the home stretch.

The glow got brighter as the dogs caught the last remaining scent and started toward us. Ardun yanked me to my feet more roughly than he had to.

"Come on!" he said, and he started up the tree, pausing to help me. We clambered up into the branches in plenty of time, but the dogs wouldn't let that stop them. They clustered around the tree, pawing at it and barking. They were bigger than I thought. I'd thought they were scary and all, but they were even scarier up close.

"It's okay. They can't get us up here," Ardun said. He was such a sweet boy- always checking to make sure I was all right, always volunteering to get water or soft grass or whatever we needed. He would have done anything for me. That was why I wasn't sorry when I pushed him.

It was weirdly fascinating to watch the dogs eat him. I'd wanted it to be quick, because it was gross. I didn't hate Ardun, I just couldn't let him win. In any case, there was a lot of pink and a lot of white when the dogs tore in. It looked a lot different from the last two weeks in the gray Arena.

The dogs ran off soon after Ardun's cannon sounded. I got out of the tree and waited for the hovercraft. I smiled when it came into view. Ardun would have wanted me to be happy.


	26. Harmony Calesque

Harmony Calesque, D10

I got through the first night by luck. I ran away at the Bloodbath. The Careers looked for the biggest threats, and the murderers picked targets that didn't happen to be me. Beth, Mist, and Dante were already dead, so things went much better than I expected for the voting Games. When the dogs came out at night, I saw them running on the horizon, but they went after someone else. If they'd come for me, they would have gotten me. There was nowhere to hide in all the short, gray grass. I knew I couldn't let it stay that way.

I found only one tree in all the Arena. It was thin and bare, so I couldn't hide there. The dogs wouldn't be able to get me, but I'd be even more visible for the Careers. I kept walking until I reached the edge of a gray stone cliff. The rocks were sharp and rough, and they scraped me up something horrible as I picked my way down to the bottom. I hunted along the rocks until I found a tiny hole right next to the ground. It was maybe two feet high and not quite three feet wide, and it felt like a coffin when I slid into it on my belly. It was about seven feet deep, and I had just enough room to turn onto my stomach or back.

My hope was that the rock around me would blot out my smell, and it must have worked, because the dogs either didn't smell me or they were busy eating somewhere else. I stayed in that hole for six days. I was too scared to even look outside. I would have died of thirst if there hadn't been a tiny stream of condensation that trickled off a rock above my head. No luck on food, though. On the bright side, it made the bathroom situation... slightly less disgusting.

I had a lot of time to think in that dark, moldy hole. I thought about my family the other Tributes, but mostly I thought about why everyone had voted for me. I hadn't thought I was a terrible person, but why else would they do it? I sat awake at night listening to the dogs and racking my brain for the horrible thing I did to make everyone vote for me. Sometimes I talked back to my parents, and sometimes I forgot my chores. But other people shouldn't even know about that. I didn't make trouble or throw loud parties or talk about rebellion. I was just a normal girl. Maybe there weren't any mean people in Ten this year, and they had to vote for someone and I just got unlucky. It was balancing out with all the luck I'd had so far in the Arena, but it was going to take a long time before things were even.

Cannons went off every day. I kept count as they added up. I hardly ever heard any sign of the people who were dying. Only once did I come close to another Tribute. Some pebbles and dirt slid down across the mouth of my tunnel, and I heard footsteps as someone else wandered across the cliffs. Then whoever it was coughed, and I heard a splat as someone fell and slid down the cliff to the ground just feet away from me. I cowered with my back against the far wall of my shelter, praying that whoever killed the Tribute wouldn't come down for a closer look. I stayed there until I heard the hovercraft motor. I watched the Tribute's back arc as the claw grabbed his clothes and he flew away.

I couldn't believe it when the third-to-last cannon went off, leaving just me and one other Tribute. I'd forgotten who it was, but I assumed it was one of the Careers. It was getting harder to move. My mouth was dry and all my bones hurt. Breathing seemed to take a lot more energy than it used to. I wished I could gnaw my hand off just so I would have something to eat.

The last cannon was so faint I barely heard it. I thought it might be mine. Someone like me couldn't win. People voted me in here so I would die. I didn't know what I did to deserve it, but I'd disappointed them again.


	27. Ruby D'Arcy

Ruby D'Arcy, D1

This had to be a first. I hoped it was a first. It was bad enough to be in the Games and know I would never have a normal life. I would never get married or have kids, because I was never going to win. Worst of all, I was in love with my ally, and he was in love with me.

We were such an odd pairing, too. I was the mayor's daughter. I got voted in because people hated how rich and callous my father was. I got voted in for having too much money. Aurum was a common pickpocket. He got voted in for having too little money. He was the last person on Earth anyone, especially my father, would want me associating with, but he was the only reason I was still alive. At the Bloodbath, Nero came right at me. If Aurum hadn't thrown a rock at his face and distracted him, I would have been just one more cannon.

I did my part in keeping us alive, too... sort of. I had a lot of enemies in One, obviously, but I had one very powerful ally. My father must have callen in all his favors to send in as much food as he did. Twelve people were already dead eight days into the Games, and only three of them were Bloodbaths. Two more screamed before they died, and the glow I saw before the cannons showed it was the dogs that did it. The other three, I suspected, died of plain starvation, and those deaths were just starting.

"It's pretty messed up, isn't it?" Aurum said. We were sitting under a tree pretending it gave us shelter when it was a skeleton, like everything else in the Arena.

"The Games?" I asked.

"That too, but I meant the voting thing," he said.

"Yeah, that sucks all around. I didn't even do anything. My dad was already rich before I was born," I said.

"Yeah, you got it rough. At least I really am a pickpocket," Aurum said.

"That's a stupid reason, though. _You_ were the worst person in One? Not one of the kids who would have killed for a chance to... kill? Why didn't they just vote for a Career?" I asked.

"I wish they had. Except then I wouldn't have met you," he said.

"Smooth as glass," I said.

"Gotta keep up the sponsorships," he said. But I could tell it was more than that. Maybe I wasn't worth going into the Games, but it wasn't just a sponsorship thing. I wished it was. I'd rather have been hungry than lose someone I cared about.

I thought there would be an elegaic end to our strange love story. Instead it ended like a novel my english teacher would have sent back for revision. Aurum went out to look around, I heard a cannon, and he didn't come back. I wanted to say it was just a passing infatuation- just young love that would have faded eventually anyway. We'd never know if that was true, though. We didn't live as long as our love.

Some Victors won by outfighting, some by outthinking, and some by outlasting. Some were still the butt of endless jokes, like Toby or, to some extent, Cornflower. A prouder girl would have wanted to win on her own merit, but I didn't care. I knew I didn't have any merit of my own. Aurum brought all the sponsors except my father, and he kept me alive until he died. Without him, it was my father keeping me alive with the food he sent. When he ran out of money a week and a half in, the food stopped coming. The only part of my Victory I could claim as my own was being the slowest to starve, mostly because of the head start they gave me. It took four weeks for Nero to die. They hauled me out at the end, too weak to even walk to the hovercraft. The only thing I could call my own was seventy-two pounds of bone and skin. By then, my heart must have weighed almost nothing at all.


	28. Azalea Meadows

Azalea Meadows, D11

No one ever hands you anything in life. Everyone's in it for themselves. You turn your back on them for one minute and they stab you in the back. I wasn't in the Games because of some cruel fate or because some far-away god rolled the dice. I was here because other people sent me in so they wouldn't have to go themselves. Everyone was here because someone else wanted them to die, and the only way I was going to win was to make sure everyone else didn't.

I never had anything against Celeste. I just had to get ahead and stay ahead. The Capitol wanted to see killers. Everyone on Earth liked to see violence, and the Capitol didn't bother to hide it. I came out of the gate and killed someone because that was what they wanted. They held all the cards, and they'd put their weight behind me if I played the game. I knew I was strong, but I also knew I had limitations. I knew I had to pick one of the weaker Tributes, and Celeste happened to be the closest. Someone sent me a club that night. I was the bully of the Arena, but someone out there liked bullies.

I didn't pick a fight with Mist. She picked one with me, and even if I didn't start a fight, I always ended it. Back home, I learned you couldn't make someone respect you. What you _could_ make someone do was fear you. Fear came through violence, either real or implied. Implied violence was preferred, but the implication only held strong if the real thing was possible. If Mist had ever shown fear, I might have let her live. But Mist didn't know fear, so I kept beating her until she stopped moving.

They liked that in the Capitol. They sent food and water, and the dogs never came for me at night. I moved around the Arena boldly, ready for anyone who might give me trouble. Once I saw a Tribute in the distance, but whoever it was moved away as soon as it saw me. They needn't have been so worried. I only gave people trouble if they got in my way. Usually.

It wasn't going to be a long Games this year. The Arena was dark and barren. What the dogs didn't take care of, depression and despair did. That was the one thing that couldn't hurt me.I'd given up on relationships long ago. I knew other people would be as quick to hurt me as I was to hurt them. Darkness didn't bother me, since _I_ was the scary thing in the dark. And there was no room for depression in my heart. For that exact reason, I kept it filled with undirected, meaningless hate.

One after another, all the boogeymen fell. Mist, Nero, Dath, Beth, Dante, and Eltara dotted the sky between smaller players. After Eltara showed up while the fire was still smoldering, I knew I was the only villain left. In an Arena almost entirely composed of villains, it meant I didn't have much competition at all. I hadn't killed anyone since Mist. I hadn't been looking, but with so few people left, I knew the Capitol would get restless. I was the last villain, and I had to make up for lost allies.

I found the last one kicking at rocks near a cliff. She spat on the ground when she saw me.

"Figures it'd be you," she said. She was the girl from Five- the one just like me. The others said she was part of a gang back home. We were the same breed, and she would be the hardest one to beat.

"Let's rumble," I said. It was old-timey slang only our people would know. A rumble was a gang fight. Usually it meant a turf war, but it could also mean a challenge for rank. We both had our lives set on number one.

Real fights aren't like what people think. It wasn't a sexy catfight where two girls hook pointed nails and grab at each other's hair. Our fights were about doing the most damage with the least energy. Nothing was a low blow. Bones cracked, faces broke, and blood flecked both of us. When I got Laeila down, no one dragged me away, and I didn't offer her a hand and make up with her. I kicked her face until my shoe squelched and gray chunks stuck to the laces. No one gives you anything here. Whatever you have, you beat out of someone else.


	29. Taylor Nettle

Taylor Nettle, D8

A lot of things would have to happen just right for me to win the Games. It would take an unbroken chain of elements. That chain started in the Bloodbath. Since I was one of the littlest Tributes, I wasn't a threat to anyone. The Careers focused their energy on taking out the bigger threats, and the other little ones like me just ran away. That didn't stop Beth, of course. She came at me right out of the gate, but she never reached me. Dath took her out from behind and didn't give me a passing glance. Eltara killed Mist so she wouldn't be able to get to the weapons in the Cornucopia, and as I looked over my shoulder while I ran, I saw her attack Nero out of nowhere. The Careers didn't even like each other, since half of them were only picked so the District would be rid of them. Before the cannons started, half the biggest threats in the Arena were already gone.

The second element came out the day after the Bloodbath. As the sun was rising, the first parachute came for me. Then another came, and then another. They kept coming all day long, carrying everything from water to an armored vest. I hadn't thought about it, but it made perfect sense. People chose their Tributes based on who they wanted to get rid of. No one wanted their Tributes to come home, so they didn't send them anything. I got picked on accident- everyone's votes were scattered and too many people voted for me thinking nobody else would. They all felt guilty, and they send me things to try to make up for it. It was way more than Eight could afford, though. I thought about it some more and realized I was the Capitol's favorite. They didn't want one of the nasty Tributes to win. Of course they'd pick one of the cute ones as their pet. Since Harmony and Nairobi died in the Bloodbath, that left me. Literally all of Panem wanted me to win.

After the shock of getting picked, it was amazing to know people didn't hate me. I ate better inside the Arene than I had back home, and the whistle they sent me kept the dogs away. They sent me a lot of weapons, too, but I didn't know how to use any of them. I carried everything I could, but the only one I could ever use was the dagger.

All along, I felt like I didn't deserve to still be alive. I had so many people behind me, and most of us were all alone. My only consolation was that I hadn't asked for this. Maybe I didn't deserve to win, but I also didn't deserve to die. I was just a kid. Like most things, it was out of my hands. People wanted to be able to watch the Games but also say they were good people. Sponsoring me let them have it both ways. I provided a service, so I wasn't completely unworthy.

In the end, it was me and Frankie. I considered myself dead as soon as I saw he was the last one left. He scared us all from the start- he was seven feet tall and his face never moved. It was like he was made of stone. He could have killed me any way he wanted to, but the worst thing was that he used arrows. Any moment as I walked through the night, he might kill me before I even knew it.

He aimed low. His arrow stuck into my vest. I turned to follow the arrow back to him and saw him standing on the slope of the cliff I'd been avoiding because I was afraid I'd fall off. He was outlined against the moon, since it didn't matter anymore if I could see him. There was nowhere for me to hide on the open plain. He drew back another arrow, but before he could shoot, the rocks crumbled underneath him and he fell. Everything was quiet for a minute, and then there was his cannon.

Page told me later that Frankie had said some rebellious things in the Arena. One last thing had fallen into place for me. I never felt like I really earned victory, but out of the people in the Arena that year, someone thought I deserved it.


	30. Mouse Parentii

Mouse Parentii, D10

Smaller is harder to see. Some Tributes are so small you can't see them at all. Especially in a dark, gloomy Arena with dark, crunchy grass. And especially if they smear themselves all over with soot and only crawl through the grass at night.

I was already a thief. It was sort of my nature. There were so few things in the world for people like me, and it was impossibly tempting to see people who had so much more. I saw them walking past with fat wallets and some combination of nature and nurture took over. I knew pickpocketing was just the only option for people like me, but there was something in my mind that made me think I would have done it anyway. My fingers started to itch and my eyes just focused in on that wad of bills. I couldn't get rid of the jitters until I went away with a little more than I went out with.

There was nothing to feel about about if I was stealing from Careers. They didn't earn the food, and we all needed it to live. I felt more thrilled than guilty as I sidled through the grass, right up behind the Career on watch. I crept around the neck of the Cornucopia and swiped a dark brown can. It was the least flashy thing within reach, so it wouldn't betray me as I crawled back away on my stomach and elbows. Usually the cans were packed in water, so I took care of eating and drinking. Once the sun was up- as much as it got up in this Arena- I smeared myself with another coat of soot and curled up in the tiny divot under a fallen tree.

The next night, I started my trip back to the Cornucopia. As I was low-crawling, I heard voices. _One_ voice wasn't out of the ordinary. Sometimes the Career on guard talked to himself or did little things to keep awake. But two- or three- voices meant they were all up. If they were all up, there was no way I was going any closer. I didn't even want to risk crawling away. Especially not when they were the only ones left with me and I was all of their biggest targets. I pressed myself up against the tail of the Cornucopia and listened.

"There's only one left. If we split up, we'll find him faster," a boy said.

"And it will be easier for you to follow and kill us as soon as we do," a girl said.

It never got farther than that. I heard metal scrape against something, and then a scream. I heard the fight play out, wondering what the noises attached to and knowing it couldn't be as bad as what I was imagining. There was one cannon, and I waited, still as death, for another. The next sound I heard was a thin whimper.

"Daddy," a girl's voice came. There was only one person it could be, but it didn't make any sense. Eltara would never sound so small. She sounded smaller than me. Against my better judgement, I crawled closer.

It must have been Nero's cannon. He was lying facedown beside the Careers' lantern, which had tipped sideways against the ground. The other boy- Torchy, it must have been- looked almost as dead, but I could see the shadows shift on his face as he breathed. Only Eltara was still stirring.

"Let me go home," Eltara said, not really looking at anything. "I'm going to die."

We were all the same underneath. One and Two thought they beat the Games by making volunteers ready for them, but they only made children who hid their fear until the last minute. It was there all along, or else she was just now finding out what she'd been running from.

She _was_ going to die. I saw the slash all down her chest. It glistened when she breathed, and blood trickled down off the side of her throat. She was lying on her back, and she wasn't even trying to hold the wound together. Torchy's cannon sounded, and Eltara's leg jerked. Morbid curiosity drew me closer, until she saw me. She reached out her hand, and it was pale in the dim light.

"Please," she said, and I understood she wanted me to come closer. I sat on my knees beside her, and for the first time, I looked down at her.

"Please get help. Tell them I'm hurt. Please go fast," she said, and she gripped my hand.

"Okay. I will," I said, because there was literally nothing else on Earth I could have said. Eltara tugged on my hand, and then her grip went lax.

"Daddy," she said again.

Eltara must have seen it many times before, but I never could have anticipated what it looked like to see a life drain out. Her eyes had shone with pain and fear, and all at once, they didn't. That was even worse. I glanced up at the air above her, sure I would see the spirit going up... maybe I looked the wrong way. Some piece of my soul must have left with hers, because I never felt the same after that.


	31. Farlon Harlon

Farlon Harlon, D9

It helps to have contacts. I didn't take anything at the Bloodbath because I didn't need anything at the Bloodbath. Seven kids died right there, bringing us a third of the way to the end. The Bloodbath had been the most dangerous part. A good half of your chances were based on luck. If I'd been by Nero or Eltara, I would have been dead meat. Torchy and Beth both thought they were hot stuff, but I didn't have any trouble with them.

The twist was announced a week before the Reaping. People needed enough time to decide who to vote for and all that. For my people, it meant time to prepare. Any of my friend group could have gotten picked, even if I had the biggest target. We called in a lot of favors all at once. Not to rig the votes- we didn't have that kind of power. It was more of calling in old debts, and getting rough faster if people didn't respond. We gathered the money together with the intent of using it on whoever got picked. Some of us were worried about getting betrayed, but that wasn't a problem for me. For all the enemies I had, I also had a few friends. Some of my buddies actually liked me, and others didn't want to incur retaliation.

My first sponsor gift was a knife- a switchblade, to be precise. It was the kind we were used to back in Nine. Some of the Gamemakers thought I was trained, but we didn't need training. I suppose I _was_ trained in a way, but only in thing I had to know in order to survive. I'd been living the Games long before I got Reaped. We knew that the best strategy for a knife fight was not to have one, and if that didn't work, we knew how to win. The others also kept me supplied with the food I'd requested when we laid out our plans. I received two bread rolls per day, along with one bottle of water and a single vitamin tablet. If prices were the same as most years, I would be supplied for two weeks and be functional for three.

Last time we met, Emmalie tried to weasel her way into my operation. She wasn't as welcoming this time. She had a lot of things from the Bloodbath, but her only weapon was a multitool. All the same, it took a long time to do her in. Close-range fights are messy, defensive things. At the end, she tried to spoil it for me by screaming to attract attention as she lay dying. I took her things and ran.

Once I had Emmalie's food, my ideal plan was to wait for the other Tributes to starve. Of course it might not work on the Careers, but it had happened before. Two of them went down in the 23rd Games of simple hypothermia. My views on their survival skills proved right after a fire swept through the Arena and a single cannon sounded. That night, Eltara was in the sky. The other Careers followed sporadically over the next week. Nero and Frankie died the same day, and the interval between their cannons suggested mutual kills.

The firebug from Eight was the last one to go. It was common knowledge that the Gamemakers liked speedy climaxes after long periods of waiting, and we were as eager as they were. Neither of us wanted to spend another night with the dogs and leave the Victor up to chance. We both used short-range weapons, so we actively and conspicuously sought each other out. We met at sundown, but the sunset dragged on as we approached each other from afar. For a moment, I wondered whether it was an artificial sun or whether they just stopped the sky.

Torchy had the longer reach, even with my knife. When he threw the first punch, I dove underneath it and stuck my knife into his leg. When he lifted the other to kick me, I squirmed between and behind him, staying out of range of his long arms. I stuck the knife once into his back, all the way to the hilt, and then jumped backwards as he turned. Then I beat a steady retreat, dodging his punches as he came at me, oozing blood. In time, his leg buckled and his breathing became labored.

After I knew he was down, I risked another strike. Then I waited, taking a few steps back as he crawled toward me. I would have made it quicker, but I didn't want to risk it. On the street, you didn't put away your knife until you saw a death certificate.


	32. Dante Efore

Dante Efore, D7

None of this was my fault. The others voted me in because they thought I could win. After I put out that huge fire and saved all the orphans, I was pretty legendary in Seven. Probably in all of Panem. One time I saw a bully giving a girl trouble. He was in a body cast for months after got done with him. That was just the kind of person I was. I couldn't stand by and let people get hurt, no matter how hard I tried.

I killed Beth in the Bloodbath. I didn't want to, but she was going after Taylor. I'd already run into the Cornucopia to get some food, and I was the first one there, since I was the fastest. I hardly even thought about it as I picked up a throwing star and chucked it at her. I thought I'd only hit her arm or something, but I was a lot better than I expected. It hit her straight in the head and killed her before she hit the ground. I could tell, since I heard the cannon.

I didn't kill anyone else the first night. It was weird how well I remembered the Bloodbath. One boy's head was cracked open when I ran past it. It was just _cracked open._ His brains were pink. Pink, goopy brains. He used to be a boy. Now he was a pile of brains.

We all scattered pretty thin throughout the Arena, and it was dark enough that it was hard to see anyone. I made my camp in a pile of rocks. I already had two bags from the Bloodbath. I had water, a lot of food, a whole bunch of random survival stuff, and a big knife. I knew how to use the knife, since my dad used to be a forest survival ranger before he became a normal lumberjack. He had to retire, since too many people knew his face.

There were dogs that first night. They howled like wolves, but they were too big to be real wolves. They were twice as big as normal dogs, and they glowed in the dark. Sometimes at home I exaggerated a little to make stories more interesting, but I couldn't make up those dogs. They ran right past me, so close I could have petted one, but they didn't notice me. They had already killed someone, since I heard the screams and the cannon. They left bloody footprints in the dark. I could see them, since they glowed.

The next few days were really boring. I didn't see anyone, except for the one time Dath ran by and I had to hide in my pile. I could probably have fought him, but I didn't want to risk getting hurt. Mostly I sat around eating and keeping an eye out for intruders. Nobody came, since they were scared of me.

If I won, I was going to give my money to people who needed it. I'd run classes for how to win in case you got Reaped, and I'd build schools and fire stations for Seven. I'd buy us fancy new machines so we didn't have to worry about getting squished anymore. Seven needed someone like me.

Probably I set some sort of record when I won. Nero came right at me with a sword, but I was too quick for him. I kept darting around, punching or kicking every time he hesitated. Eventually I got his sword away from him and stabbed him with it. It hardly took five seconds for him to die.

That wasn't really how it happened. When the Games were done, I was tired of lying. I was finally all out of lies. Me and Jonathan were the last two. The dogs chased us both and we ended up running pretty close to each other. I lived because I curled up into a ball when they reached me. Jonathan looked back as another dog jumped, and it latched right onto his throat. Blood came out of him like a hose. Every time I closed my eyes, it was still spraying.

* * *

The truth was, I told all those lies because I knew no one liked me. If I was some great hero, I could pretend it was because they were jealous. They didn't like me, and I knew it. They didn't like me because I was an annoying, lying, bigmouthed brat. Really, this _was_ all my fault.


	33. Celeste Ligon

Celeste Ligon, D3

There were a lot of things I wasn't good at. I wasn't good at computers, which was why I got picked. People in Three used so much of their brains for science they didn't have any left over for compassion. If you weren't useful to the District, there was no reason to keep you alive. I was never good at organizing myself and applying logic to problems. I had emotions and they came out one way or another. The others didn't like that. I wasn't sure if killing a kid over something as minor as that was coldly logical or callously emotional.

I wasn't much good at running, either, so I was surprised I made it through the Bloodbath. There are always a few who slip through, and I must have just gotten lucky. Just about everyone else my age got killed- Harmony, Taylor, Jonathan. It wasn't even the Careers that did most of the killing. They went after the strong ones, like Frankie. The littler ones were all Beth. They were all near her on the platforms, because the Gamemakers didn't want someone innocent to win.

Acee kept me alive after that. She only sent me one thing, but it was the thing I needed most. She knew I could live weeks without food, but only days without water. Every day at least one cannon sounded without any screams or commotion as someone else died of dehydration, and every night at least one cannon sounded with screams as someone died from Careers, Beth, or dogs. Things cleared up a little after the seventh night. Based on the loud discussion and cheers I heard from the other side of a hill, it was the Careers that freed the rest of us from Beth. Mist was one of the ones that dehydrated.

I wasn't sure why I kept trying to survive. There was no way someone like me could win. I wasn't here because I was good at killing people or because I was evil enough to try. I was just a reject. Three thought there was no value to someone like me, and people from Three were pretty smart. A lot smarter than me, anyway. I kept moving more out of a morbid fascination with the cannons and a dark curiosity over how many people I could outlive before the inevitable happened.

Before the Games, Acee told me she knew she had a good chance from the start. She said she knew that if things went as planned, she would definitely win. She didn't disregard the possibility of bad luck or calamity, but she was never really scared. Of course she wouldn't be. She was the ideal Three citizen. If every Tribute was like her, all Victors would be from Three. She never said anything about my chances being low. Either she was more compassionate than the others, or she saw something I didn't, but I couldn't imagine what it was.

I never saw any other Tributes until the very end. I kept count of the cannons and was more surprised with each one I heard. I never would have imagined I would outlast Eltara, just like I never would have imagined Frankie and not I would die in the Bloodbath. I never started to get any hope, though. Just because I'd been lucky this far didn't mean I had a chance of winning. I took it one day at a time and was too scared to look any farther ahead than that.

Two and a half weeks in, me and Erwin were the only ones left. I had no idea how things were going to turn out. Erwin wasn't the kind to kill people. He had a wife, and they were about to have kids. If he was anything like he was before the Games started, he wouldn't be looking for me. It would be the dogs or the Gamemakers who decided who won.

He wasn't looking for me. I knew because of the dogs. The next few nights, they hovered at the ends of the horizon but didn't come right at me. They moved slowly enough that I could stay out of their way. Sometimes they split into two packs and some of them ran off into the night. They were herding us together.

I saw Erwin the third night. There was blood on his face and he looked brokenhearted. He came to me slowly, and I didn't run. Running wouldn't save me. There was no way I could get better than second place. I didn't want to draw it out. Erwin sat next to me on the ashy grass.

"I killed Nairobi," he said. He flexed his arm spastically, like he was remembering something. "They want us to be killers, and now I am."

"Are you going to kill me?" I asked, wondering why he hadn't done it yet.

"I don't want to be like that," he said. "I didn't want to be what they wanted. I changed when I killed her. I became someone else. I don't want to do that again." He started to cry. Emotions were something I understood. I scooted closer and held him. Being there is more important than talking.

The dogs didn't like us not fighting. They howled and ran at us. I bolted right away, and Erwin came after me. They chased us both toward a cliff. It was either get killed by dogs or get killed by falling, and we both picked falling.

* * *

All my bones crunched when I hit the bottom, but I was still alive. Erwin's head came open like someone stepped on a berry. There were a lot of things I weren't good at. I wasn't even good at dying.


	34. Jonathan Wright

Jonathan Wright, D6

I was the middle child, so I was used to being forgotten. The older child was entitled to privileges and preferential treatment by virtue of her birth. The youngest child was entitled to privileges and preferential treatment because he was too little to know better. The middle child deferred to the oldest and cared for the youngest. What was I entitled to? Neither.

Being called up to the platform for Reaping Day was the first time I'd ever had a crowd of people look at me. It was cosmically unfair that the only time I would ever be the center of attention was when I was dying, and I was only dying because everyone saw my name, didn't know who I was, and assumed no one else did either. It was the highlight of my time in the Capitol when Seutonius looked right at me and said "Here's Jonathan Wright!" To him, I wasn't a middle child. I was the only child.

Surely the Careers wouldn't forget about me. We all blurred together to them. They had no idea that I was any different than the other kids they wanted to kill. And yet when the Bloodbath started, none of them came for me. Nero went for Ruby and shattered her back. Beth went for Harmony and Mist killed Mouse while muttering what sounded like arcane tongues. My one advantage came through and I slipped away invisibly.

The fragmented and unstable Career alliance quickly imploded. The only survivor was Eltara, and she died four days in. After that, the elements took over. There was no food in the Arena, and I would have died with most of the others if it hadn't rained on the third day. I conserved my energy by hiding in a pile of rocks. My only company was the pack of dogs that ran by on the fifth day.

There was something eerie and unsettling about being alone so long. I wanted nothing more on Earth than to hear another voice, but it was at the same time the most terrifying thing that could have happened. The quiet stretches went on so long that sometimes I would say something just to ensure I hadn't gone deaf.

After the first week, I wasn't alone anymore. I couldn't tell, later, when I'd made up my companion. As soon as he arrived, it was like he was always there. In the darkness of my pile, which I left only perhaps twice daily, I heard a voice. I knew it was only in my head and that I'd invented it, but it was better than nothing, and soon it became more than that. My friend, who never had a name but answered when I called, wasn't real, but that didn't mean he wasn't _real._ I narrated my actions and made one-sided small talk with the nonexistent listener, and the presence of my voice grounded me in reality. It amused me that we were stuck with each other. I couldn't leave my friend because he was all I had, and he couldn't leave me because he wouldn't be real without me imagining him. Even if he wanted to leave like all the others, he just plain couldn't.

I lost count of the days after the first week. Nearly all my time was spent in my pitch-black hiding place. First I lost track of minutes, then hours as I started to come out irregularly and never knew whether to expect light or darkness, and then days. There was no routine to keep me in order, since I had nothing to eat and slept on and off all the time, more and more as I lost energy. I didn't even know who was left with me. I knew there were three of us left, but I'd forgotten to look at the sky one night, and I missed the faces.

Two cannons came right after each other as I was telling my friend about my favorite book. The Anthem played and I burrowed out of my hiding place to see why. It was light outside, and it burned my eyes. I didn't have the energy to stand, so I sat on the charred grass as the music played. A voice broke in after the last note.

"Presenting the winner of the Twenty-Fifth Hunger Games, Jonathan Wright!"

 _He remembered my name,_ I thought. _Oh, that's why the music was playing,_ came my next thought. I stayed seated as the hovercraft came down. It didn't seem real to me yet, and it probably wouldn't for a long time. It must have seemed real to some part of me, though, since I felt my spectral friend fade away. I didn't need him anymore, but I knew he'd be back if I ever did.

Later I found out how I'd won. With Tributes like me that hid all the time, the Gamemakers always sent something eventually to flush them out. That had been the plan with me, but it just somehow never happened. They must have forgotten.

* * *

 **Not that I'm bitter about being a middle child...**


	35. Mist Hastings

Mist Hastings, D4

I killed Troy three times. The first time was right after the Bloodbath. I hit him with a stick and tore his throat open with my teeth. I thought he was gone, but he came back the next day. He was the same as ever, his throat whole again. Whole enough for him to talk. I killed him again, with a rock this time. He stayed away for two days that time.

A parachute came down from the sky after that. I shied away from it. The government sent it, just like they sent the people that took Troy and brought him back to life. It was something to kill me. When I finally crept up and opened it, it was just gasoline. There was a note inside, telling me to burn everything down. I had a friend, then. Someone knew how much danger I was in and knew Troy was already trying to find me again. He couldn't find me if he was burned.

I poured the gasoline on the grass and set it all on fire. It spread everywhere in minutes. I heard Troy screaming from every direction at once. I found him after the fire died down. He was covered all over in burns, and it was easy for me to kill him. That time he stayed dead. A loud noise sounded and hovercrafts filled the air. They were coming to get me, and I couldn't get away.

"Mist?"

It was Shelle's voice. I remembered Shelle. Something had been wrong with my brain when I last saw her. I remembered her as a monster, but I could see that wasn't right. I was in an entirely different world, one where things made sense, and I didn't know what to make of it.

"Mist, I know you're very confused right now," Shelle said as I sat up. "You have schizophrenia. Do you know what that is?"

It was like having a real brain for the first time. I _did_ know what that was. Yesterday I hadn't, but now I did. All those things I thought in the Arena weren't true. And that meant-

 _Oh my god._

"While you recovered, you've been receiving medication. The affects are progressed already because you've been recovering for a week. I know it's hard to accept, but this is normal. Everything you see here is actually here. You're cured."

It wasn't that easy, of course. Immediately after Shelle could see I was able to understand, she waved another woman into the room. I was in obvious need of a psychiatrist, but I had been so unstable they were afraid I would think she was another hallucination. I stared at the new woman in confusion and dread.

"Troy is dead," I said. I didn't remember everything that happened while I was insane, but that part stuck with me.

"Yes, he's dead," the woman said.

"Who did I kill?"

* * *

I killed four people in my life. First I killed Troy. Second I killed Mouse Parentii. Third I killed Harmony Calesque. Fourth I killed Dante Efore. I wasn't really myself when I did it, but that didn't stop the guilt. It was what I had to tell myself over and over as I worked with Shelle, my family, and Dr. Matheson. I'd been insane for almost my whole life. It would take long to undo all the damage my mind developed. I was a Victor, though, and I had that much time. Recovery was so hard I sometimes wished I was back the way I was, so far from reality my emotions were barely real. My support network was tireless, though, and we pushed on together. We got to where I started to move toward real recovery, and after that, we'd work on showing me I deserved it.


	36. Nero Augustus

Nero Augustus, District Two- 18

The Games were almost over, and I was sad. Only other person was left, and I'd been looking for him for weeks. It wasn't fun in the Arena with no one else around. I couldn't pick on anyone if there was nobody to pick on. All I could do was roam around all day looking for Aurum and hide in trees throwing rocks at the dogs all night. It was stupid and boring.

I played back all my greatest hits in my head as I looked for the final mouse in the Arena. First there was Ruby, who couldn't even squirm with her broken back. Then the kid who actually was named Mouse, and boy did he squeak like one. I was lucky the fire took out all my allies. It meant I didn't get to kill them myself, but it also meant they couldn't kill anyone before I did. I'd picked up the slack in full.

It took another three long, boring days before I found Aurum. When I saw him, I thanked my lucky stars it hadn't taken me any longer. He was stretched out flat on his belly, his arms all the way out in front of him where he'd tried to drag himself along. He wasn't long for this world, and I couldn't have that.

"Hey, buddy," I said when I reached him. "How about some water?" I poured out some water from my bottle into his parched-looking mouth. He was too far gone to see it was me, so he drank it.

I sat by him the rest of the day until almost sundown, coaxing him to drink and sit up. As he started to realize who it was who was sitting next to him, he looked at me suspiciously.

"Why are you helping me?" he asked.

"What, you think I'm a bad guy or something?" I asked. "Because I am." I punched him in the face, knocking him flat on his back.

"Here's why I helped you," I said as I kicked him in the side. "I can't kill you if you're dead." I just wished he'd believed me more. It would have made it even more fun.

Aurum made it as hard for me as possible. He didn't fight back, but he moved into every punch and kick. He was trying to die as quickly as possible just to take away my fun. I had to hold back a little just so it wouldn't be over in five minutes.

There are a lot of organs in the body. Some of them aren't really needed to survive, but they still hurt a lot when they get hit. Your kidneys are way far up on your back, which is funny, since you pee out your bottom. I kicked Aurum's over and over. He would have pissed barn red if he'd had long enough to piss again. It was okay, though. There was still plenty of blood all over the rest of him.

Aurum didn't make as much noise as I'd hoped, so I made up for it by making him look even worse. I'd been smart enough to take a pack of matches from the Cornucopia. I'd always wondered if eyes sizzled if a match hit them.

"You know, I'm getting bored. Why don't we take a break? I'll give you an hour. See how far you can get," I said. Aurum tried to get up, but not hard enough to make it.

"Really. I mean it. You might get lucky. You're not dead yet," I said. Aurum looked at one of the knives scattered across the ground and pushed up onto his feet.

"Kidding," I said, kicking his legs out from under him. "But we both know you didn't believe me."

I started in on his ribs that time. I never was good at counting, but I must have broken at least a dozen of them. And there was still plenty more body after that.

A cannon broke in as the sun was about to finish setting. Blaring music put an end to the fun.

 _Way to spoil it,_ I thought.


	37. Aurum Niteo

Aurum Niteo, District One (15?)

I didn't think Ruby was going to die in the Bloodbath, and it hit me really hard. There was nothing I could do when Nero barreled toward her. After what he did, I was actually grateful to Eltara for ending it. I got away in the confusion, and then I was on my own.

Really, though, I didn't get far away. I knew the only supplies in the Arena were in the Cornucopia. I knew I had to do something absolutely crazy if I wanted to live, and something absolutely crazy is what I did.

In the far back of the Cornucopia, there was a pile of thick blankets. There were softer blankets near the front, and it wasn't very cold in the Arena. As the Careers fought, I darted into the Cornucopia and hid underneath the blankets. As soon as I did it, I realized exactly how harebrained the scheme was, but the stars must have aligned, because none of them saw me. They went through the supplies, but no one bothered to look at a bunch of scratchy-looking blankets.

That night, I waited impatiently while the Careers split up and settled down. Most of them went off to look for victims, leaving Nero as a guard. That pleased me greatly, because I knew there was no way Nero would do his job. Sure enough, as soon as Eltara was out of sight, Nero took off looking for someone to kill. I shed my sweaty, itchy cocoon and helped myself to supplies, focusing on water and dehydrated foods. I slipped out into the night without so much as a how-do-you-do.

 _Great, I have water and food. Now what?_

I was doing fine until the dogs came. We must have all been running like maniacs, and they must have seen someone else before they saw me. I hadn't known I was so close to someone else until I heard the girl scream.

It was Eltara's face in the sky that night. That was a huge break for the rest of us. I couldn't rely on luck forever, though. I had to get to somewhere they couldn't find me before night fell.

I had only one option. When I reached the rocky cliffs, I started to scramble down, scraping my legs on the sharp rocks. I wedged myself into a crack out of sight and spent a long three days cowering like a dog.

 _Hah, cowering like a dog_ from _a bunch of dogs._

The dogs turned out to be my best allies. Two days into my rocky exile, they ate Nero. Since Beth got herself killed at the Bloodbath, the only huge threat left was Mist. Then she died four days in, and that was when the sky starting lighting up with faces. People started dropping of dehydration, and once it started, it spread like wildfire. I clung to my backpack full of water bottles and tried to make them last.

The Gamemakers don't like Tributes that don't move around. I pretended to be moving around the cliffs, and every night I moved back to the same spot. But then something terrible happened: I ran out of water.

I had two options: stay out and die in a few days, or go back to the Cornucopia and see how good a pickpocket I was. There were only two other Tributes left, but obviously they had something going, since they weren't dead yet. I couldn't be sure I would outlast them.

When I got to the Cornucopia, Dath was guarding it. I crouched down by some scrubby grass, trying to make a plan. Then I saw someone else coming at the Cornucopia from behind. It looked like Laeila, and she must have had the same idea as I did. It didn't take a genius to add up the numbers.

As Laeila neared the Cornucopia, I started to crawl forward, still hidden in the grass. Laeila stopped behind the Cornucopia and threw something out diagonally in front of it. Dath heard the noise and got up to investigate. Laeila threw another rock and Dath ventured out. Laeila crept around the Cornucopia and grabbed something. She darted away, managing a three-second head start before Dath turned, saw her, and gave chase.

 _There's my cue._ As Dath ran after Laeila, I ran to the Cornucopia. I felt terribly exposed, even if Dath wasn't looking. I grabbed a water bottle in each had and turned around to flee. I looked over my shoulder as I went, but no one was coming.

I heard a single cannon, and I sped up. Then, fifteen seconds later, I heard another cannon. I stopped.

 _What do you think of that?_ I thought. _She must have killed him back._ I looked at the water bottles I held. _I don't think it counts as good pickpocketing if no one was there while I took it._


	38. Torchy Conden

Torchy Conden, D8 (16)

I was Torchy Conden. The firebug of Eight. The bane of Peacekeepers. The scourge of the District. People pointed to me in the streets and whispered to their children that I was what happened if you didn't stay in school. So why on Earth was Merle into me?

"Torchie?" she asked when I came back from gathering firewood. And how did she do that? How did she somehow say my name in a way that I _knew_ it was a diminutive and not an adjective? Not that she was one to talk about names. _Merle._ It sounded like some piece of detritus you ran over on a dirty road. _Look out, you'll hit that merle!_

"That's my name. Don't wear it out," I said. _That sounded a lot cooler in my head._

I started to stoke the fire, taking pride in perhaps my last shred of manliness. I should have left Merle a long time ago. She was soft and sweet and definitely not Victor material. I would have left her, but... I felt guilty. I felt like a rat leaving her alone. She'd get herself killed the second I stopped watching out for her. She wanted to ally with _Beth,_ for goodness' sake. 'Beth is just _misunderstood!'_ she'd said. 'We should help her!' Sometimes there's no helping people. People like Merle didn't understand that. People like Beth kill people like Merle, and that's why people like Merle are so rare. Maybe that was why I didn't want to leave her.

A shadow fell across the doorway to our cozy little bonehouse. I jumped up and whirled around, ready to attack. Merle stood more slowly, ready to greet the newcomer.

"Who is-" she stopped dead and took a step back. Even Merle knew there was no befriending the figure in the doorway.

Out of all the murderers and butchers in the Games, Jack was maybe the worst I'd ever heard of. I wasn't even sure he was human. He might have been a mutt, planted among us by the Gamemakers to fool us into thinking he had a soul. I couldn't even look into his dead eyes, since they were covered with a blood-spattered mask- the same blood that soaked his machete.

 _You can get past him,_ I thought when Jack took a step into the room. He stepped a little to the side, toward Merle. I could sneak past him and get halfway across the Arena while he was still working on her. My legs tensed to start, but I couldn't do it.

"Get away!" I yelled. I flew at Jack and shoved him toward the wall. He barely budged, except to raise his machete. I raised my arm as I backed away, escaping with a slashed arm instead of a severed head. As Jack was about to strike again, Merle chucked a chunk of cinderblock at his head. She had more fight than I thought.

My only chance in Hell was to keep moving. Jack was nearly indestructible, but he was also slow. I dodged around the constricted bonehouse, throwing things at Jack and feinting. I was hoping to open a path for Merle to escape, but she was in the far corner of the room, and she probably wouldn't have run even if I told her.

 _Time to go big or go home._ As Jack raised his machete, I ducked underneath it and shot out my arm. I plunged my hand into our roaring fire and grabbed a log. Fire may have been my oldest friend, but it still hurt like a son of a gun when I grabbed that stick. I swung the log at Jack's pants, playing a hunch that would either save us or kill us.

" _Run!"_ I screamed, grabbing Merle's hand and yanking her past Jack, who burst into flames as soon as the log touched him. In an Arena this nightmarish, it was only logical to assume the Gamemakers would give us flammable clothes. Jack started to flail and stumble around the room, giving us time to escape. As we ran, the light coming off Jack lit our way. When I looked behind us, he was still upright, swinging his machete like he could kill the flames.

"Your hand," Merle said when we finally stopped.

"It's nothing," I said. What a way to get myself hurt. All of this over a girl.

* * *

 **Most of these are the ending of the Games, but it just felt better to write this moment for Torchy. If you haven't read the non-Career Resurrection Games, it was based on horror movies. Jack was submitted with that in mind and is exactly the Jason Voorhees copy he sounded like. Torchy winning the Games wasn't as cool a moment as Torchy killing Jason.**


	39. Eltara Vetirata

Eltara Vetirara, District Two (18)

It was almost insulting to be in these Games. Neither of the Tributes from One were trained. My partner Nero was an oaf who pulled the wings off flies. Mist should have been in a hospital, not the Arena. Dath was the only one who could have given me any trouble. Which was why I killed him in the Bloodbath.

The Games passed almost as quickly as the water Arena. I focused on the older Tributes, one after another, and let the dogs take the younger ones. I wanted to win, not kill kids, and I was content to let the mutts do the dirty work. Every night I climbed on top of the Cornucopia and waited for the howls, the screams, and the cannons.

It was lonely being the only Career. From the moment I joined the Academy, I'd been part of one clique or another. We were competing, but there was bound to be some camaraderie. We talked trash about the Academy in One. We speculated on who our partners would be and which of us would crack under pressure and turn into a bitter, washed-up instructor. I'd expected to be part of a pack, like most Careers, and it was strange to be on my own in the dark, spooky Arena. At night I would look up at the cloudy sky and wonder if it was really cloudy or if it was just a projection on a force-field. It was like living in a bottle, or more accurately, on a microscope slide.

I was glad to see Beth's face in the sky after a stretch of howls in the night. I wasn't afraid of her, but she was unstable. Fights with her kind were ugly. I wasn't worried at all about Mist. She had the intent, but she didn't have the rationality. Her cannon came in the daytime, and I suspected she simply dehydrated. The boogeyman was no more. _I_ was the boogeyman now.

The faces blurred as I cut down Tributes. The little girl from Ten. The mobster boy from Three. The ugly boy from Twelve. Most little more than ciphers who offered only token resistance. I didn't want to tempt fate, but deep down, I wished I could have one real battle. Winning was hardly anything to brag about under these circumstances.

I forgot about Frankie's bow, and that almost did me in. When an arrow thudded into the ground inches from my feet, I had to flee back to the Cornucopia like a little girl. I was about to strap on the heavy-duty body armor when I had a better idea.

When Frankie next crossed paths with me, he saw I had a helmet on. He switched his target to my torso, and I staggered convincingly as the arrow hit the vest I'd put on under my shirt. I followed the arrows back to Frankie as he lay hidden in a crevice, shooting more arrows at me and waiting for me to inevitably collapse. By the time he was close enough to see I wasn't bleeding, I was close enough to see him and throw my spear.

After only one real battle, the Games were over. I went back over the events as I waited for the hovercraft. There was my tussle with Dath at the Bloodbath, a few hairy encounters with some of the tougher outliers like Farlan, and Frankie. It wasn't much to brag about. I was glad I won and I wasn't one of those people who courted death so they could say they cheated it, but it _was_ a bit underwhelming.


	40. Xzavier Thomas

Xzavier Thomas, District Three (18)

It was funny it ended up being me and Farlan. Neither of us was supposed to have been trained, but both of us had in a way. I just did it on the off-chance the worst happened. He did it to get money for his family. In the end, we both got Reaped. I didn't know why they voted for him. I _really_ didn't know why they voted for me.

Somehow or other, it was me that ended up on top. We both took major damage, but I got in a few lucky hits, and maybe Farlan had already been through a few fights. Whatever the reason, I was the one the hovercraft came for. At the time, it was just surreal. I didn't really understand I'd won until maybe a week later, when they finally let me get out of bed.

There was one person I wanted to see. According to Cilantro, mentors usually came to their Tributes right away. Acee could be a bit distracted, so I didn't necessarily make anything of it when she wasn't there. I tracked her down in the Three lounge and found her fiddling with a broken blender.

"Hey," I said.

She looked up and set the blender down. "Oh, Xzavier! I didn't know you were up," she said. She got up to move to one of the couches in front of the television wall. I took a seat next to her.

"Good job winning!" she said. "It's been too long for us."

"Are you my mother?" I asked. All these years I'd been wondering. When the moment finally came, I couldn't hold back.

Acee sagged a little in her seat and looked out at the corner of the ceiling.

"I guess I owe you an explanation," she said. Just like that, the mystery was solved.

"You got Reaped," I said. "I understand why you left me. But why didn't you come back for me?"

"To tell the truth, I was scared," Acee said. It might have been strange how calm she was, but Acee was always unflappable. "I never planned to have children. I was a bit of a wild child. Imagine that. As smart as I might seem, I wasn't smart enough to plan ahead. Pretty dumb, right? I wasn't going to kill a kid just because I messed up, and I'd started looking around for a home before the Reaping came. That just forced my hand, and I left you where I knew you'd be found. I kept saying I'd come back for you, but I just... I got scared. Raising a kid is way scarier than the Games, and it's something I know way less about."

I wanted to cry and laugh and scream all at once. I'd found my mother, but she'd left me. We were together again, but not because she wanted it. Did she even care I was back?

"Did you ever miss me?" I asked. I thought I might cry, but I was too mixed-up.

"I sent money to Dr. Thomas a few times. Then he died and I lost contact with you. I tried to convince myself it was just a past indiscretion, and if you'd died, I guess I would have gone on trying. I'm a terrible mother, aren't I?" she smiled ruefully.

"But you _are_ my mother," I said again, still trying to reconcile it.

"Yep. Call me Mom," Acee joked. "If you want."

"I _do_ want," I said. "Are you still scared?"

"I think I've spent enough time being scared... son."

* * *

 **For Xzavier, I elected to explore the possibility of Acee being his mother. That was a result of his form and Acee being the only viable candidate. It's unanswered in the main universe, but for this one-shot, I confirmed it.**


	41. Beth O'Darielle

Beth O'Darielle- District Twelve (17)

I love killing. It's so me.

I may be nuts, but I ain't no fool. As much as it hurt, I didn't go after anyone at the Bloodbath. I snatched a knife and got out of there. Every cannon was a wasted chance, but sacrifices had to be made. I got a lucky break when Eltara took out Nero. That still left a lot of killers, though. I had to work fast to make sure they didn't take my supply.

Nairobi was my very first. It was funny how I didn't remember their names until after I killed them. After I smeared their blood on me and saw the color of their insides, it got easier to remember them. Nairobi, Mouse, Harmony, Jonathan. There were a lot of names to remember.

I had a bit of a close call with Dath. I only wanted to _make_ trouble, not get _into_ trouble, so when he came by, I had to hide in a dirt pile, which was a little messy and a little embarrassing. I was picking dirt out from under my nails for hours after that one.

The dogs were also tricky. I had to be careful not to wander far from a tree at night. I liked hearing the screams get louder and then quieter, but I hated losing more victims to a bunch of ugly mutts. I did admire their perfection, though. Once I got home, I hoped they'd let me keep one as a pet. We could work together. Sometimes I'd let Killer chase someone down and then I'd do the killing. Sometimes _I'd_ chase someone down and let Killer do the killing. And sometimes we could race each other.

Getting enough water was also a challenge. For some reason, I never got any sponsors. I had to swipe it from people I killed, which gave me even more motivation to kill people. Sometimes I got all the way to someone and they didn't even have any water. The nerve! I killed them extra slow.

"This little piggy went to market," I said in a high-pitched voice, holding up Ardun's big toe. " _This_ little piggy stayed home!" I tossed his second toe on top of his stomach- 'home'. " _This_ little piggy had roast beef." I didn't have any roast beef, so I stuffed it in his mouth instead. "Okay, he had tongue, anyway." I cut off the fourth toe. "This little piggy had none." I made a sad face and tossed the toe away. "And this little piggy cried 'wee, wee, wee!'" I cut off Ardun's last toe in three shallow gouges so he made the noises in time with my words. "All the way home."

After the cannon sounded, the anthem suddenly started playing. I realized what was going on and cursed. I'd lost count. Ardun was the last one. There was no one left. I should have made it last. I should have done both feet.

 _Do you think my talent can be killing?_ I asked myself as I waited for the hovercraft. They sure liked killing in the Capitol. Maybe I could be a Gamemaker. Twenty-three kids had to die. I could sure help with that. I didn't have to stop after all. It could go on forever.


	42. Laeila Carter

Laeila Carter- District Five (16)

Dynamos fight together and bleed together. I knew my brothers would be there for me.

The first package came on my second day in the Arena. All it had in it was a bottle of water. They knew that was what I needed the most, and I knew my gang wasn't exactly rich. I made it last and searched the Arena for anything I could use as a weapon.

On the third day in the Arena, the Dynamos sent pemmican. It was light, cheap, and filling. They couldn't send much, but I was used to not having much to eat. There was nothing else to eat in the Arena. We were only three days in, and ten people were already dead. Most of them probably dehydrated. I had to scoop dew off the grass every day and hope for the best. I was barely scraping along.

A week later, I got my third package. I was hoping for a spear or a big knife, but it was brass knuckles. _Oh well,_ I thought. _That's probably the best option anyway._ I wasn't trained in weapons or anything like that. I did know how to punch a guy, though. That was sort of my role in the Dynamos. We had the smart guy, the strategic guy, the diplomatic guy, the guy who could get things... and the puncher. The puncher was me.

Eleven days into the Games, I ran afoul of the glow-in-the-dark dogs. I'd managed to avoid them until then, but they finally caught up with me. Honestly, I didn't think I'd make it. I wasn't dumb enough to think I could outrun a dog. It was a a stroke of pure luck that there was a tree in my path. It was so close that one of the dogs actually nipped my ankle as I scrambled up into the lowest of the branches.

The next day, I was way more thirsty than normal. My jaw ached a little, too. I hoped I wasn't coming down with a cold. In any case, I soldiered through it and went on with my day. It was hard to stay patient while I gathered dew, though. Spit pooled in my mouth as I watched the droplets pile up.

My muscles jerked while I tried to sleep. Maybe it was nerves, or maybe I was dehydrated. I tried to drink as much as I could. I was just so thirsty all the time. Only five of us were left.

 _I'm so done with this. I'm sick of it all. Who do they think they are, putting me in here? When I get my hands on them, I'm going to rip them apart._

My face was wet. I was so thirsty, and my face was wet. I tried to slurp up the liquid, but my throat was clogged. I wished those dogs would come back. I wanted to fight something. I wanted to bite into something and stick my hooked fingers into something's eyes.

The boy underneath me was making noise. I wanted to rip him open and spread him across the Arena. I hated his face and his stupid noises. The noises split open and stopped when his throat fell apart. I felt warm wetness on my face and tried desperately to drink it, but my throat was stuck shut. That made even more mad. I screamed, kicking and punching at his body and spreading it thinner and thinner across the ground.

My arms hurt. Blood was everywhere. I dug my teeth into the girl's arm and ripped her flesh. I felt her meat in my teeth. I was warm and wet all over. Every time she slashed her arm across me, it hurt again and I wanted to fight even more. I saw nothing but red as I tore at her with tooth and claw. Something stung me in the back, and then I wasn't mad anymore.

They told me later that I was in a coma for three weeks. It was the only way to cure that advanced a case of rabies. People don't get rabies that bad and live. They said they could count the number of exceptions on one hand, and every one of them had massive medical intervention. It was all Greek to me. I just remembered being really mad, and it all blurred. All I cared about was that I won. This was the best of both worlds. All the stuff I did- I would have done it anyway. This way I didn't even have to feel guilty.


	43. Dath Zachariah

Dath Zachariah- District Four (17)

I didn't think they'd really pick me. There were at least a few students at the Academy who were better than I was. Truth be told, I suspected there were two reasons I got picked. The first was that the best Academy student was seventeen and they wanted to let him have another year of training just to be sure. The second was that I might possibly have a lot of girlfriends, each of which wanted to let me have the chance they thought I wanted so much.

The competition was different this year. Usually it was us Careers and a bunch of scared kids. We were the only ones who actively wanted to kill. This time, there were a lot of outliers looking for a fight. They wouldn't all be scared of us. Some of them were so brutal they would seek us out. We had the training and all, but things happened. I could die. This wasn't just a happy-go-lucky outing. I could die before I was eighteen years old.

Careers were supposed to go crazy at the Bloodbath, but I held back. I'd never told anyone, but my priority was survival, not performance. Academy students weren't supposed to have any weaknesses, but I couldn't lie to myself. I was scared. I was scared I would die, and I didn't want to take any risks. All I did was take my weapon and go. I watched the carnage over my shoulder as I went. Eight Tributes died in the first ten minutes of the Games. Most of them didn't bother me, but I was sorry to see Nairobi go. She was such a pretty girl. I flirted with her a little in the Capitol and even asked if she would ally with me, but she didn't trust me. I wouldn't trust me either.

The Games turned into a battle of attrition more than anything else. There was no food and no water anywhere. It came down to who had sponsors. As soon as I started looking for water, a bottle floated down from the sky. _Aquamarine says hi,_ the note said. When I was finished with that one, another one took its place. _Thalassa sends her regards._ I had more ladies than Ten had cows. I could have lived the rest of my life in the Arena, or at least until I got old and ugly.

When Mist attacked, I felt somehow guilty. She came at me without any fear, like she didn't even know she could die. It was over so quick I didn't even have time to get scared. As she lay bleeding, she kept pleading with some invisible person. I hadn't won a battle. I'd killed a mad dog. I didn't even stay around to make sure she was dead. I wanted nothing to do with her.

Every time I got a sponsor gift, I had to put on a big show. I had to thank the girl and flash a big smile and promise I'd make it worth her while. I took off my shirt once because it was hot, and right away two parachutes came down. I enjoyed the attention, but sometimes I felt like a piece of meat. This wasn't a fun party for me. I depended on their gifts to stay alive, and it bothered me to think they might stop sending them just because they got bored of me.

When it was just me and Eltara, she wasn't as easy as Mist. She was as offensive and I was defensive. It was all I could do just to stay alive. Then she slipped past my guard and stabbed me, barely missing my heart. I started to panic, flailing wildly and attacking with strength I didn't know I had. I knew I only had minutes left. If I didn't kill her, I would die. I couldn't afford to be defensive anymore. I more hacked her to death than killed her neatly. I might have been the Victor, but nobody in Four was going to be impressed. I was a live dog, but all I cared about was that I was alive.


End file.
